Roarke: An Origin Story

Family Reunion

         “Roarke is gone. They’re gone.”
        The voice said that over and over again. It was Josephine’s voice. She wasn’t outwardly speaking it, either. I could hear it in my mind, but not with my ears. They were thoughts. Okay, I can read minds, too, I noted in annoyance. When am I going to stop learning about what I've become?
        That snapped me out of my trance. My fangs stayed elongated and the very painful burning sensation remained in my throat and mouth. I could hear growling beside me, and when I looked to the left of me at Jace, he was now in a similar position I was just in and was baring his fangs even. He looked like the creature that had attacked us at the party, and it sent a shiver down my spine. Is that what I looked like just now?
        And before I knew it he sped off towards the house. I launched myself after him and tackled him. We both collapsed to the ground with me on top of him. He let out a loud vicious snarl and tried to throw me off of him. I shoved his face in the dirt as hard as I could to try and get him under control.
        “Jace! Snap out of it!” I yelled at him.
        He snarled again and squirmed around to try and get me off of him. I tightened my grip on the back of his head and shoved his face into the dirt more. After several minutes of struggling, he finally managed to throw me off of him. He got to his feet quickly but I put myself in front of him before he could try anything. He narrowed his eyes before launching himself at me, but I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into a nearby tree, causing the tree to snap in half. Jace landed at the base of the tree and laid there for a couple seconds. Then, he staggered to his feet and glared at me with sheer hatred.
        “Get out of my way, Roarke,” He growled.
        I shook my head and got into a fighting stance. I would protect my family at all costs, even if it meant I had to fight one of them to do so. We already lost our parents. I didn’t want to lose anyone else, and I didn’t want Jace to do something that we both knew he was going to regret. He has to snap out of it.
        His eyes narrowed and he launched himself at me again, aiming to punch me square in the face. I caught his fist before it connected, which made him give me a surprised look,  and kneed him in the stomach. He reeled over clutching his stomach with his hands, still snarling viciously. While he was hunched over, I grabbed both sides of his head and brought my knee up, hitting him in the center of his face. He yanked himself back with a loud scream, then looked straight at me with that same rage he had before. He lurched forward and aimed to try and punch me again. Before he could, I gave him a right hook, a left hook, then an uppercut, which caused him to lose his balance and fall into the dirt again. I climbed on top of him, placing my knees on his arms so he wouldn't be able to shove me off again, then started punching him in the face over and over again.
        “STOP IT!” Edith’s voice yelled.
        I froze with my hand up in the air as if I was about to strike Jace in the face again. His face was very bruised up now, but he seemed to have finally snapped out of it, at least. The crazy look in his eyes was gone, replaced by confusion. He had rolled his head to the side to look up at the porch of our two floor farmhouse. My back was to it, so I couldn’t see who was there with Edith. There was an audible gasp from behind me from Edith, then sniffling. She was crying. Crying really hard, actually. I could hear it in her voice when she spoke again.
        “Stop fighting you two! I can’t believe you both are alive! We haven’t seen you in days!” She exclaimed, her voice wavering.
        I slowly lowered my fist to my side, then pulled myself off Jace as normally as I could manage so as to not scare her. When I stood up, Jace pulled himself into a sitting position and looked up at me with guilt coloring his expression. I offered my hand to him, and he took it and pulled himself to his feet.
        “Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me,” he mumbled,
        “It’s fine. It would be hypocritical of me to be mad at you when I almost lost control over myself as well.” I said.
        Finally, I turned to face Edith on the porch. I kept my head down somewhat so she couldn’t see my eyes, but kept it up enough so that I could see her face. It was hard to read the expression she had, but she definitely looked extremely conflicted with what she was looking at.
        “We…We thought you two had died,” She said softly.
        The others started to come outside now as well to see what the commotion was about. I just carefully observed their expressions when they spotted us. Thankfully, nobody seemed scared…yet. Vivienne was the first one to rush down the stairs to us. She ran to Jace, who tensed up again. I kept my eyes on him now to make sure that he didn’t lose his mind anymore. When Vivienne got closer and dashed past me to hug our brother, that delicious smell got stronger and stronger. That smell was from people, I thought in horror.
        Jace held his breath and looked up into the sky to prevent himself from going insane again. The others followed after Vivienne to surround us and now they were asking us all questions.
        “What happened to you two?” Lillian asked.
        “How did you two get here without your horses?” Demitrius questions.
        “It’s been days! Are you two okay? Have you eaten anything yet?” Josephine asked quickly.
        “Why are you two so pale now? And Cold, too?” Vivienne hesitantly asked.
        “What’s going on with your eyes?” Sebastian demanded.
        Dammit. He saw my eyes.
        I kept my head down so none of them could see them again. Jace stayed as quiet as me, too. I could hear each thought going through his head as well as my own thoughts. He and I were communicating through telepathy, essentially.
        How are we going to explain this to them? Jace thought.
        I’m not sure. We really didn’t think this through.
        Edith put her hand under my chin and tried to push my head up to look at her. She couldn’t even get my head to budge, which seemed to frustrate her. Then she grabbed my hand and she tried to pull it up, which also didn’t budge and frustrated her more. I was just standing here like a statue.
        “WHY WON’T YOU LOOK AT US!” she shrieked.
        That made both me and Jace snap our heads to her. They all let out an audible gasp when they saw our faces, our eyes, what we became. I could hear each of their individual thoughts, almost smell their fear even. Edith’s eyes were full of questions, questions that I wasn’t even sure how to answer.
        After a moment of silence, Zachariah started asking questions again.
        “What happened to you two? How are you both alive?”
        Jace and I glanced at one another with the same uncertainty. I looked back at Zachariah carefully. It was something that he really didn’t want to hear about, I’m fairly certain. And not because he didn’t care, but because of how gruesome it was.
        “Are you sure that you want to know?” I asked slowly.
        They all gasped at the same time when they saw my fangs. I eyed each of them carefully. They all had taken one or two steps back now, taking in our appearances. All of them looked unsure of what they were looking at. They were extremely focused on our eyes and fangs whenever we opened our mouths.
        “Roarke…”Lillian said trailing off.
        “Yes we want to know,” Sebastian snapped. “You were dead! The both of you were!”
        “Yes,” Vivienne chimed in. “We may have gone back to the mansion to see if anyone had survived and…there was nobody. Jace’s body was in the grass. Your body was near the door, Roarke. Your arm…It was destroyed.”
        I held up the arm that had been completely destroyed for her to see it was now completely fixed and healed, as if it were never broken in the first place. I flexed my fingers and twisted my arm around. They all eyed it warily, even Jace. Edith grabbed my hand again and flipped my arm back and forth, examining every part of it carefully. She pressed on it and probed it with her fingers, even squeezed it and pinched my skin, which didn’t hurt like it normally would have.
        I heard Jace inhale quietly. I turned my gaze to him to see his face was strained as if he were in excruciating pain. Well, no he is in pain right now, I corrected myself mentally. The burning sensation is so bad in my throat that I would be more than happy to slaughter one of our siblings, as insane as that is to think or want to do. But I could control myself. I knew for a fact I could. Jace on the other hand might snap again soon if I didn’t get him away from them.
        “Yes, please let’s get away from them,” I heard his thoughts say to me,” Come up with something to get them to let us go. Anything.”
        I racked my mind quickly for anything they might be needing since we’ve been dead. We couldn’t go into town and buy anything if everyone thinks we were murdered. That would be a really complicated story, especially seeing as how we don’t even look human anymore. Maybe we could go hunting again for them if they were out of food.
Then the idea hit me harder than a bull stomping on someone. Jace and I could go hunting for ourselves. The smell coming from our siblings is driving us absolutely insane, so why not try animals instead?
        “Would that even work?” Jace asked me telepathically.
        “I mean…It doesn’t hurt to try it, right?”
        “I suppose so.”
        When I opened my mouth to speak, our siblings either gasped or took a step back again. I tried to not let it bother me for obvious reasons, but realistically I wasn’t going to hurt them at all. Not that they knew that, I mused to myself. For all they know, I’m exactly like the demon that attacked everyone at the party.
        “Jace and I will get to your questions later. He and I are going to go on a hunt. You lot are probably running low on supplies anyway, yes? Where is Balias?” I said urgently.
        “In the stables. We brought him back when we all escaped.” Zachariah said.
        “Okay. Thank you. Now, if you will excuse us.”
        “You promise to answer our questions, Roarke?” Edith asked quietly.
        I looked at her carefully for a quick moment, then nodded. “Of course. Me and Jace will answer every question that you have when we get back.”
        With that being said, before they could ask us anything else, I grabbed Jace by the arm and tugged him away from our family. I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my head as we walked. When we were somewhat distanced from them, I could hear them talking about us, assuming that we couldn’t hear them at all.
        “Did you see their eyes?” Lillian asked quickly.
        “Yeah, that was a peculiar thing to see.” Dimitrius spoke.
        “I’m scared of them,” Edith said. “Especially Roarke. You guys didn’t see them fighting. He was moving at demonic speeds. Faster than a human is capable of. Those bruises on Jace’s face were because of Roarke.”
        Hearing her say that made me feel extremely guilty. I only did it to save their lives. It would have been another Cooper mansion incident if I hadn't done what I did. I wish that she had never witnessed that side of me today.
        As we walked, Jace must have sensed the guilt coming off of me, because he patted my back twice and said,”It’ll be okay. They just don’t understand. I think that’s one of the few things we shouldn’t explain to them, though. For their sanity.”
        “Agreed. They’re already scared enough as it is.” I said softly
        “Well, let’s not dwell on that too much, Roarke. Now, shall we go hunting?”