Luminescence (Luminescence Trilogy) Read online

  LUMINESCENCE

  a novel

  by

  J.L. Weil

  Kindle Edition Copyright 2012

  by J.L. Weil

  http://jlweil.blogspot.com/

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1475232845

  ISBN-13: 978-1475232844

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  I WAS PISSED – SERIOUSLY PISSED.

  And that only meant extreme trouble. Enough so that even in my heightened anger I was frightened. Scared not for myself but for anyone who got in the path of fury now just past my control.

  The ripple of heat flowed through my veins – bubbled to boiling point. It scorched my skin, causing a line of crimson haze to swivel in front of my eyes. So hot it felt like flames from a dragon licked at the back of my throat, threatening to lash from my mouth if I dared speak. Clamping my teeth down together excruciatingly, I avoided my lips in the process. The thought of tasting my own blood didn’t bode well at this very moment. Not with the intense tingle I felt everywhere.

  “Let it go Brianna.” I faintly heard Austin’s resigned voice. He might have touched a hand to my arm, but I was too far in depths for reasoning.

  My temper was something I learned early to avoid at all costs – all costs. Going to severe pains to keep it under wrap, deep breathing, the whole find your center of balance. I’d taken classes in mediation. Learning to control my emotions, doing what I could to protect others from myself. It had been so long since it had hit me with such intensity that I had forgotten what it was like – had forgotten that it was wrong.

  Experimenting with my odd, peculiar and volatile temper was something I never did. Trying to pick it apart and find out the particulars to why it initiated such bizarre and often harmful results didn’t sound like a good idea. The sensations it induced made me feel out-of-control, wild, and reckless. Like there was nothing and no one that could stand in my way. I felt empowered. Then after I’d seen the results of what I’d done, I was consumed with guilt and shame – a freak. What normal person inflicts the impossible with just a flare of anger?

  Usually it wasn’t an issue. I made sure of it. Keeping mostly to myself, with just a few close friends, but even they didn’t know the violence that lived within – no one knew. Not my friends, not my parents when they were alive and not even the one person I trusted and loved most in this world – my aunt.

  Part of it was shame and part of it was fear. What if someone found out? I’d no doubt be branded as the freak I felt. The nuthouse would be my new home.

  None of it made sense, which was why I don’t stress about it – normally. Regardless, I tried not to reflect about my freakish attribute and how different it made me. What I wouldn’t give to be free of whatever curse or hexed I’d been born with. That was how I thought of it – a curse. Nothing like this could be good. Mostly I refused to allow myself to get mad or on the verge of angry – I walked away.

  Until today.

  I would have today if only Rianne had let it go. If she hadn’t pushed me further and further until there was no other response but to react. If only she hadn’t chosen this day to harass and bully one of my best friends. And maybe if I hadn’t already been in a shitty mood from the day of hell I was already having. There had been an underlying headache that just wouldn’t quit, gnawing away at the back of my skull. Or if Tori, Austin and I had stayed another minute at our locker’s fooling around we wouldn’t have passed Rianne in the hollow.

  But as it turned out, we did pass by Rianne and she had bump purposely into Austin knocking him downing, spewing vile words at him in her cheerleading skanky voice. A voice which begged me to tear her into shreds and ripe out her wicked tongue that had no regard for the hurt she caused others.

  Austin wasn’t a big guy. He might have a few feet over my five-foot, two-inch frame, putting him almost at equal level with Rianne. His weight wasn’t much better and hardly made sense since he ate like a dying horse on its last meal. Today he had on skinny jeans today, emphasizing his scrawny legs. Hair product styled perfectly still in place, framed by his bottle glass green eyes now crystal and bright with humiliation. There was a stellar resemblance between Austin and Kurt from Glee and had the whole GQ thing going for him.

  Nonetheless, it wasn’t how Austin looked or how he dressed that had Rianne yelling those choice words out over the hollow. It wasn’t enough that she’d purposely rammed into him while we were making our way through the crowd. If it had been anything else, I would have been able to maintain the thread holding my anger in check.

  “Get out of the way faggot.” She shrieked over the bustle and commotion of the circular room as kids made their way to final period. With both palms spread, she took advantage of his unsteadiness and shoved, sprawling him over the mascot in the center where practically the entire school congregated between classes.

  Yep, Austin was gay.

  My controlled snapped like a rubber band. The combination of hearing my friend being called that ugly name and seeing him tossed ass first on the schools dull gray carpet, I felt the first inklings of my temper peak.

  Momentarily stunned I just glared at Rianne while the assault of emotions snuck up on me. Somewhere in the smog I remembered Tori speaking to Austin.

  “You okay?” she whispered, giving Austin a hand up.

  If he had given her a reply it was lost by the full fledge flood of rage that consumed me.

  Fecklessly I reached out in front of me and grabbed Rianne’s arm, stopping her from turning and walking away. Her sneering golden eyes pierced into mine with disgust, like little spears of hate. She couldn’t believe that I had the gall to touch her. I was normally quiet and very non-confrontational. This was so out of the norm it hit a home run off left field.

  With a tug she attempted to shake off my grasp, but my hold held like a vise grip. “L-E-T go of me,” she hissed through clenched
teeth – drawing out the threat. But her anger was nothing to match my own. Right then my fury spiked. I felt the fervor racing in my blood and tumbled into my fingertips. My hand trembled under the tight clutch I had on her arm.

  When I spoke my voice sounded nothing like my own. It quivered with potency. “Like hell. You should watch what you say,” I spat.

  There was a falter in her expression when I realized she’d felt the burn – the sting that radiated from my fingers. Again she tried to wiggle out of my hold. When she failed a second time, her gaze turned to mine and widened in astonishment, skepticism and a touch of fear.

  “Your eyes,” she accused, staring intently into mine. “What’s wrong with your eyes?” her voice cracked, giving away the incredulity and dubiety she must have felt. Appalled, her feet scrambled to back-up.

  Stepping forward, my heart accelerated. Thumping heavily against my chest – her admission put anxiety into my stomach. I let go of her arm with a quick jerk. She stumbled once, unsteady on her feet but never took her eyes from mine. They bore into me with fear, repulsion and disbelief – branding me like the freak I felt.

  My breath came in quick pants as I averted my gaze and closed my eyes tightly, trying to get a handle on the rage still pumping in me. Calming the quick pants to longer slower ones, I recalled one of the meditation techniques I’d learned. I didn’t know what Rianne thought she saw in my eyes other than extreme anger, I tried to cajole. Even if her fear had been real, it was hardly past Rianne’s character to make a fool out of others in front of the whole school. Hell, it was what she did on a daily basis.

  Continuing to mentally talk myself down, I felt the slow recession of my flare-up. The warmth faded from my skin and the overwhelming urge to punish Rianne drifted with the loss of contact.

  “Brianna, are you okay?” I heard Tori ask behind me over the swiftly receding roar in my skull.

  Shaking my head I tried to clear the rattled outburst, berating myself for the enormous slip in front of the entire school nonetheless. If I wasn’t thought of as odd and weird before, this just put me on the front page of weirdo’s attending Holly Ridge High.

  “What did you do to me?” Rianne screeched accusingly at me in a tone of contempt and outrage.

  Saying nothing, I opened my eyes to see her clutching the arm I had grasped. Dread sunk to the soles of my converse covered heels. Had I really done that? Was I capable of inflicting that kind of harm with just my fingers?

  Bright, swollen cherry marks lined Rianne’s arm in the spots my fingers had clasped. The wound looked like imprints or burn marks from a flatiron that had penetrated her flesh, except my fingers had been the branding-iron.

  There was no doubt of the horror I saw at my hands now blistering Rianne’s forearm. Embarrassment, regret and shame swarmed my gut, twisting it heavily with guilt. Not willing to answer questions I didn’t have answers for, I quickly turned to leave.

  Like a gust of wind I became acutely aware of the large audience my spectacle had created. They stood circled around Rianne, Tori, Austin and I – some chanting and jeering our names, encouraging a fight.

  Without a second thought I pushed my way through an opening in the awkward sea of people, rushing before someone could stop me or prior to teacher arrival. The need for escape steamrolled over me – there were too many eyes, too many questions, too much emotion.

  My mind seemed to have temporarily abandoned me. There was no other explanation for my actions or for my legs carrying not to my last class but to the exit doors of the school. I’d never in three years of high school ever ditched out on a class – I know unfathomable. However, I’m among the select few who like school. Okay maybe not so much school but learning. Being shy and mostly socially challenged, books were more my friend than my peers – Tori and Austin the exception.

  My actions today were so out of character for me, I began to doubt who I thought I was. I hated confrontation. I never caused trouble and I don’t attack people in the hall burning the fuse on my temper. Never.

  Right now all I knew was that I had to get out of here, run from what I just done and seen. The walls of the school suffocated me in their confines.

  As I stepped out the front door of school, a soothing breeze whipped through my tousled dark hair. Washing over the flush in my face, it cooled the heat that had crept up on me during my impermissible mood. The balmy air was scented with just a taste of the ocean in the distance – it never seemed far away.

  Holly Ridge, North Carolina had been in the mitts of one those dreamy sun-drenched days. But now gray clouds were rolling across the sky. The ground was drenched from a downpour of rain. A crackling of lightning lit in the distance followed by a gentle rumble of thunder. Whatever storm had passed through was on its way out. Ironic that it fit my mood – dreary and unpredictable.

  Peering around at the lush landscape, a sight I often took for granted, the overhang of trees and grass meeting the sandy shores, then plunging into depths of expansive turquoise sparkling sea. The grass began to glisten as sunbeams tried to break through the storm clouds.

  Inhaling a deep gush of flavored misty air, I rounded the corner to the backside of the building, rushing toward the parking lot. A strange prickly sensation climbed over me, like clashing with a cactus. Doing my best to brush it off, I took the corner faster than planned and sped up my retreat. Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one who apparently skimmed out of school early today.

  Leaning comfortably against the wall was an unfamiliar face and in my haste I smacked into him – literally. My face connected with the solid front of his chest, hands clutching on the muscle of his biceps. In an impossible gut-reaction he caught me in his arms. We wavered a tad but he managed to keep us erect instead of mortifying me further and tumbling us to the grass.

  Damn, I thought. What else could happen today?

  I forced my glance upwards from the black cotton tee that conformed to his chest, ready to apologize for my clumsiness. Heedlessly of how much I wanted to keep my head lowered, run and forget this day happened. His hands tingled on my arms still holding me. Which should have been to intimate for comfort, but I found the opposite to be true. A sense of safety came over me, probably because he had just saved me from falling on top of him.

  My hands released their grip and flatten on his chest. His heart quickened under my fingers. The scent of him drifted to my senses smelling of the forest, wild and reckless. The apology I’d been about to utter, stuck in the back of my throat. In that blinding moment I tripped into a set of sapphire eyes. My own heart picked up speed, thumping wildly in my chest – uncontainable like stallions roaming the plains. Nothing like the trepidation I felt previously. This was racing excitement.

  He raised a perfectly arched brow decorated with a studded bar. His eyes sparkled with amusement, assumingly at my gaping stare. Unaware that I’d stood stunned, feet planted with no attempt to move from his arms. In retrospect I can only hope he didn’t find me as stupid as I later felt.

  My gaze wondered from his eyes down the planes of his cheeks to lips donned with yet another piercing. This one was a hoop in the center of his lower lip. Those silver studded lips upturned into a lazy smirk. I watched fascinated by the curl of his mouth. An intense string of butterflies flew in my stomach. They felt more like fireflies because of the warmth that swirled with the exhilaration. Fleetingly I wondered if there were any more parts of him pierced.

  His mouth lowered the tiniest fraction closer to mine. The breath I held caught in what I never would have imagined – anticipation. I actually wanted this strange guy to press his lips to mine. Right now it was all I wanted – his kiss. The zeal of his breath fanned my senses, making me dizzy with the scent of him. My mind must have taken a detour between eighth and ninth period.

  A gentle stroke of his thumb on my bare arm sent a shudder down my spine, knocking me out of my spellbound gawk. I jerked out of his embra
ced, immediately missing the contact. What was wrong with me? I don’t encourage strange guys to kiss me, really any guy for that matter.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded harsher than intended.

  He lifted his pierced brow again mockingly. “Saving you it seems. Obviously I’m not the only one ditching last period.”

  His voice was an extension of his look – dark, sexy, edgy, mysterious and dangerous. Not precisely the kind of guy you’d want to meet alone in an alley, bring home to mom or behind the school yard for that matter.

  He was dressed from head to toe in black – dark denim with a loud t-shirt, combat boots and a thick leather band around his wrist. This guy wasn’t shy about jewelry. He had a James Dean quality – rebel without a cause ambiance.

  Now that I wasn’t so enamel by his eyes I could appreciate the whole package. His hair was layered around his face with flirtatious slashing strands black as sin. He was a mouth full of eye candy – yummy and delicious.

  “I – I don’t normally ditch class,” I stammered, running a frustrated hand through my tangled hair.

  The look he gave said he found me entertaining, but didn’t buy into the whole not ditching thing. He just shrugged his shoulders.

  Narrowing my eyes at him I slung the bag that had slipped back over my shoulder. “I’ve never seen you here before. Do you even go here?”

  His eyes caught mine again and they seemed to laugh. “Umm yeah – It’s my first day.”

  “You ditched on your first day?” My voice was as perplexed as the idea was to me.

  “Sure. It seems worth it now.” His voice held sex appeal – husky and dark. “I’m Gavin,” he introduced, shoving both hands in his pockets now that he wasn’t holding onto me.

  “Brianna,” I replied. The last warning bell sounded reminding me that I shouldn’t be loitering. “I should go,” I mumbled hastily.

  He leaned back casually against the brick wall, one leg propped up behind him. “I’ll be seeing you Bri.” He shortened my name like were acquainted more than we were. His husky voice held promise.