Eight.....xomos

Summer was less than happy having to come up to his room in the first place, seeing him with Genny Norwood did not help. As much as she liked the interesting little actress, she wasn’t about to watch her beloved but naive twin give his heart up to another human girl, when would he learn?

“Sorry to barge in like this,” Summer began, polite as ever, “but Will, there’s a stupid b***h downstairs wanting to talk to you. I thought I’d asked your permission first before I kicked her out,”

“Permission granted,” he said without delay.

“No, Will, you need to talk to your girlfriend,” Genny said, following her better judgement against her natural urges.

“Ex-girlfriend, we broke up and Summer made it clear to her she was the only person in the world expressly not invited here,” he replied.

“Changing a relationship status doesn’t make it over, she’s not gonna leave this until you guys can at least talk, and you owe her that,” Genny continued.

“We’re not getting into who owes who what,” he snapped, “where’re you going?” he asked as she got up.

“I’m leaving you to talk to Naomi in private, and if you’re gonna act like a child and not do it then I don’t feel like hanging around,” she replied.

He sighed. “Fine I’ll talk to her. Bring her to me,” he said to Summer authoritatively, who turned on her heel and left the room.

Genny chuckled. “God complexes much,”

He smiled in response. “You don’t have to go,”

“This is between you and her, and you need to get past her before you can get to me,” she said after shaking her head, “And I don’t want you using me to make her jealous or anything stupid like that,”

“C’mon, you know you’d use me like that given the chance,” he replied, getting up from the deck chair and walking her to the door.

As she stepped through she saw her, Naomi Carter, perfect brown skin, soft ringlets, and full lips, lead by that tall blonde girl and followed by Summer’s boyfriend. And Naomi saw her. Registering where she was coming from, the other girl’s eyes sliced into Genny’s flesh as she held her ground not wanting to break eye contact; feigning confidence as she was so practiced in.

“Will,” Naomi said upon entering the room, shutting the door behind her, and not hesitating to take a seat on the bed, “You would’ve loved London, and it would’ve loved you, the history, the diversity, the culture-”

“The sex,” Will cut in, leaving Naomi speechless.

“Will I can’t believe you would think I-”

“Would you just stop pretending you’re such a goddamn lady, when all you do is act like a w***e!”

“Will!” Summer scolded from outside the door, only loud enough such that someone like Will could hear, “She. Is. Nothing. Keep your emotions is check,”

He wanted to shout obscenities at his twin too, and get her to stop eavesdropping, but there was no way to do that without Naomi knowing. Instead he let himself pretend she was somewhere far away.

“Okay it happened Will, I cheated on you, it happens to people, but this is what’s real, and you know it. You wouldn’t throw away what we have,” she said, standing up.

“You’re making it out like a force of nature caused you to lock lips with two other guys. You fucked up, now you pay for it,” he replied, choosing his words carefully, and refusing to let her get below the surface again.

“Will,” she replied, ignoring him, taking a step closer, “I know you care about me too much to just let this go,”

The petit girl with the bouncy hair stepped forward and mashed her lips against Will’s, perhaps in an attempt to remind him what he was missing, but all Will could feel was yet more rage and an anguish he would never admit to.

As her fingers began knotting themselves in his hair, his hands went up to meet her wrists, dragging them down to their sides, using all the willpower he had not to crush them in his grip.

She finally pulled her head away from his, a horror-stricken look in her eyes. “Will, ah-ow, you’re hurting me,” Naomi gasped, twisting her arms away from him.

“Don’t say my name.” he replied, eyes darks, lids lows and voice steady, “Don’t talk to me, don’t talk about me, don’t look even look at me, even when you think I won’t see. In fact it’d probably better if you pretend I don’t exist at all, because as of this moment you do not exist to me,”

Tears began welling up in her eyes, not because their relationship was over, Will knew, but because of the pain in her wrists caused by his unrelenting grip. He would’ve denied to anyone that asked that some less human side of him enjoyed seeing her pain.

“Let me go or I’ll scream,” she said through gritted teeth.

Taking her in one last time, he let go. “Get out,” was all he said before turning away. He listened to the slam of the door behind him.

 

She wanted to see more of Will that night, she really did, Genny even went to look for him after another hour or so, but according to Summer he just went AWOL. Eden did enlighten her to the fact that the Saturday he was taking her out was Valentines, so she hit him with a rather alarming text that read: ‘UR TAKING ME OUT ON VALENTINES!?’ To which the missing boy replied ‘Yep I thought u knew no backin out now XD’. When Genny asked where he’s been hiding he didn’t reply, so she had no choice but to go home when her friends did and wake up in time for Church the next day.

 

Thunder clapped outside, this time there had only been a three second gap between it and the lightning that preceded it. It was getting closer.

“I think I’m gonna go home now, it’s getting dark and the weather said it might hail tonight,” Eden said, closing the book she had out.

They were in the library studying for their mid-terms, ignoring their creative demands for a couple of nights. She’d been blowing off Will all week to study " and babysit " knowing that if she didn’t pass with Cs on all her academics she might lose her scholarship. But she couldn’t bring herself to say this to him so she lied, she wouldn’t let herself forget who she was and what she’d been working for for so long " even if what she was wasn’t human. However, between Will missing school on both Monday and Tuesday, and her disappearances to the library their relationship was back-tracking. It was Friday night and Will thought Genny was shopping with Paige.

“Me too,” Paige said, picking up all the paper she had out.

Following suit, Genny started shoving stuff into her bag and threw her jacket on. She was feeling completely unprepared as Eden started her studying weeks before and Paige was actually some kind of genius.

“Paige,” Genny said, remembering something as they made their way to the subway station, “You never explained that whole situation on Saturday, I saw you making out with a junior,”

“How did I look?” was her response.

“Fine, I guess, mysterious maybe,” Genny said.

“How?” she asked, her doe-eyes widening at Genny.

“I dunno,” she replied, exasperated as usual, “But what’s the deal with you two, has he called you? How did it even begin?” she said as she began wondering if she’d really have to spell it all out for someone whose grades qualified them as a true intellectual.

“How did it begin? I thought Keegan was hot, so I told Eden I thought Keegan was hot, and she told me he was a junior, but the last junior I tried it with didn’t like me cause I was a sophomore, so I didn’t tell Keegan that,” she explained, pushing her curly brown ringlets out of her face.

“When was the last time you tried it with a junior? And what did you tell Keegan?” Eden asked.

“About twenty minutes earlier that night. I told Keegan I was the Davenport’s 17 year old cousin Portia, then I played on what was most likely to get him to make out with me,” Paige said.

She looked at Paige, not knowing what to say. “What do you mean?”

“I told him I was a glamour model and I would be shooting my first porno when I turned 18, but I really wanted to be a runway model, after that he was all over me,”

Both she and Eden’s jaws dropped just as more lighting flashed.

“It was merely an experiment, thought it’s not really accurate I used two different test subjects, to make it even near valid I would have had to use the same boy who didn’t like me as a sophomore, but then I couldn’t tell him I was 17 because he already knew who I was,” Paige elaborated. She certainly was a mystery. Then she smiled and said, “His expression was funny when he saw me at school and called out ‘Portia’ and I told him my name was Paige and told him the truth,”

“Why would you do that?” Eden asked.

Paige looked puzzled. “Because it’s the truth,”

They all got on their separate trains home, before Genny had to turn back to the library, realising she’d left her keys there.

The rains was growing progressively heavier and people around were growing more and more antisocial, pushing past to get to where they were going and out of the cold wet streets. Genny wondered at how the grey buildings that over-looked them could block out the sun but offered little protection against the rain. For a moment she missed the Venezuelan climate, but thinking back to the amount of family members you had to be polite to " no matter how bogus they acted " reminded her why she was so happy to be back after Christmas. Her family frustrated her, especially as they weren’t actually her family and they never let her forget it.

Genny felt a sudden surge of paranoia as she couldn’t help but notice two people in floor length cloaks, hooded, had been going the same way as her for a while and were always about five metres behind her in the thick downtown crowds. Maybe paranoia is just a symptom Ivory and Cris forgot to tell you about, a voice said inside her head, trying to calm her down. It didn’t work. Growing frantic, she sped up her pace and made it to the library, her heart pulsating rapidly. They didn’t follow inside.

Within, she let lose a deep breath and familiarised herself with the calming quiet that libraries held. There was nothing to run from, nothing to fear inside a library, at least not this metropolitan one.

Finding her way back to the table they’d be at, her keys were there on the blue fabric chair waiting for her. Relieved she turned to go back outside.

Standing outside the main entrance, they were there, the cloaked men waiting for her. She froze. They didn’t even so much as have their backs turned to the library on-looking the street to seem nonchalant; they were staring inside, two of them, hoods up and faces thoroughly shadowed.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do!? Her mind screamed. If they had anything to do with the Aphotians, like Ivory and Crizanto, then she should trust them. But if she could trust them why would they do this? Wouldn’t they at least try to reassure her she was safe? Or maybe she just wasn’t. “We spend a lot of time, not all our time, but a lot of time fighting those who want us dead...” Ivory had said. Crap! What if they want me dead!? Struggling to keep a lid on her fear, Genny could barely hear her own thoughts over her heartbeat. She hadn’t told anyone about what she was, not Eden, nor Will, not even her beloved big brother whom she used to tell everything a long time ago. Genny hadn’t even said it aloud, so how could they know what she was? Maybe they were the good guys after all. Good guys don’t stand around looking all formidable like that! Her head screamed at her.

Maybe they had nothing to do with being an Aphotian, it might have been something else entirely, but what were the chances of anything else strange happening to her at a time like that.

She walked over to the reception desk, addressing the probably less-than-prepared librarian. “Excuse me,” she said to him, “those men out there followed me here, and I don’t feel comfortable going back outside,”

The librarian looked over her shoulder. “What men?”

Pushing up her glasses, she turned around. Clear as day they were standing outside the door, a woman passing them to walk through the automatic library doors. “Those two,” she replied, pointing at the door and turning back to the man at his desk.

Putting his glasses on, he stood up. “I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be seeing,” he said.

Genny looked back around, perplexed and fearful. They were gone.

“Mierda,” she whispered, petrified.

Something unfamiliar, but trustworthy, inside of her to her to run, run like her life depended on it, but it just might.

Leaving the desk, she took a slow walk to the door and peeked outside. The automatic doors opened and she could see no fearsome men around. Genny made a dash out of the door and down the road, running faster than she ever knew she could. Not knowing if anyone was actually chasing her, she turned her head back- and there " coming after her, and catching her up quickly " were the cloaked men-

No, they weren’t men, they were unmistakable monsters. One of their hoods flew off and he did not attempt to put it back. Underneath was a one eyed thing, hairless with pale green decaying skin. Its mouth was open and rotted yellowing teeth " no, fangs " were splayed, and green-brown gunk was pouring down the sides of its jaws. Genny kept running.

She dived around a corner and took a chance by running into a 7eleven. They remained outside. That same new feeling reminded her of the bracelet.

Unsurely, she raised it to her lips and said their names into it. “Ivory, Crizanto, please help me,” she added, praying they’d show up some time soon.

The blackness blew off the bracelet in a puff of dust. It was back to its original wooden brown state.

She stalled in the shop, looking at insignificant items, wondering if they had just pulled some little trick on her jewellery, but why would they do that? She waited still, cautious that those things would decide to come inside after all.

After exactly seventeen minutes the two showed up.

“Argent? Are you okay?” Ivory said to her. Standing so close, she smelt almost of metal.

“I was being chased-” she said quietly but frantically.

“By those three Xomos outside, we saw them,” Crizanto said levelly.

“If that’s what you call those monster things, then yeah, and there were only two before,” she added, growing more panicked.

“Shh, shh,” Ivory tried to calm her, it was more than patronising, “It’s okay we killed them, they’re dead,”

“What!” she said, horrified that she could’ve actually been killed by those things if not for Ivory and Cris, “What were they? Why were they chasing me?”

“We can’t explain that here,” Crizanto said, “We need someplace to go,”

It was pouring outside by then, but she knew they needed somewhere non-public.

“You guy don’t have jackets?” she said to them. Ivory was in a wet sweater with holes seemingly burnt through it, and leggings; Crizanto was in a soaked t-shirt and sweatpants with similar holes.

“We didn’t have time to bring them,” Cris said.

“Plus we don’t really need them,” Ivory added.

Genny frowned, continuously confused, but took them to three adjacent benches in the park northwest of Humboldt Park she was so accustomed to. It was deserted of people. They sat close together on one bench beneath her umbrella, probably mostly for her own sake.

“Explain,” was all she could say.

“The Xomos,” Cris said, “We don’t know where they come from, but we know that they get their sustenance from souls,”

Her brow furrowed. She pushed her glasses up, the raindrops creating annoying smudges on the lenses.

“Classic storybook monsters,” Ivory said, “They eat our souls, it’s that simple, there’s nothing else we can say to make it more believable,”

“How?” Genny couldn’t picture this in any way.

“We’re not entirely sure, we know very little about them, but they bite into you, dribbling that green gunk all over, and you die, writhing in pain. They also can’t come inside, reason unknown, they just can’t, but you can’t hide from them indoors because others show up, their numbers will just keep multiplying. You can’t run from them either because once they have your scent they will stop at nothing to get to you. The one and only way-” Ivory said.

“Known way,” Cris interrupted.

“Known way,” Ivory returned with a sharp look, “Known way to get rid of them is to kill them, but ripping out their hearts which are behind their pulsating eyeball and really close to their mouths, for protection I guess, because this makes it easier for them to bite you. And that green Xomos juice they spew, that stuff burns like hell, it’s full of concentrated marasulphur- which is this painful chemical thing. So yeah, no running, no hiding, this will only increase their numbers, you must kill when there little of them. They’re worse when they’re hungry and you will be able to tell, believe me. Also they eat every two to three weeks,” she seemed like she was counting down a list, “One more thing, once your soul is gone, you turn into a Xomos, which is why we can never really get rid of them, we don’t know how many are out there. And don’t worry, become one of us and the first thing they’ll teach you is how to kill the Xomos, stay human and they’re not likely to bother you anymore,” Ivory looked at Crizanto, almost for reassurance it seemed.

“We think that the human myths of Zombies come from the Xomos, dead people who hunt people turning them into more dead people,” Crizanto added, “Good job,” he said to Ivory.

She punched him in the arm, before taking out the scrunchie which had held her hair in a bun.

“Why could nobody see them but us? Don’t they eat humans?”

“This part is hard,” Cris began, “They emit a wavelength invisible to humans, the ultra-energy it’s called, it’s on a fourth dimensional plane. We can emit it too, when we run, or do things impossible for humans to do,”

Ultra-energy? Where had she heard that before?

“And the Xomos can eat humans too, but usually only when they’re starved of Humanics and Fey, somehow they prefer us more,” Ivory added.

“Again with the Fey, what do you mean by that? And what are Humanics?”

“Aphotians are Humanics, changed from human, beyond human; Humanic. Fey are sometimes depicted as Fairies and Elves and Goblins and stuff, they’re harder to explain because they’ve been here longer than us, they’re just magic non-humans, some of them can even fly,” she continued.

“Why does it sound like there are other Humanics?” she said, curious.

“Because there are,” Ivory said, “But so you get all this so far? Because when Cris was my defender I was confused the entire time. Luckily he had his defender there to help him,”

“I may have been worse, but I was much younger than you are now,” he retaliated.

“You guys are sophomores right?” Genny asked

“That’s usually how it works, the chain of Chosens are often born in the same year and younger than their defender by three or four months. If you become one of us then get a Charge, he or she will be either a sophomore or a freshman, or at least they are right now,”

“So what about my family, will I be the only Aphotian?” she queried.

“They’ll stay human, but your kids will be Aphotians, no matter what the father is,” Cris said.

“So my half brother Daniel won’t have to deal with this,” she had to ask, thinking of her only blood relative running from the Xomos, and even worse, fighting them. They both shook their heads at her, she continued, “So this is the, the creature you fight that wants you dead,”

“Oh,” Ivory said, “When we said that we weren’t referring to the Xomos, we were talking about another Humanic,”

“Explain,” she said again. With the rain hurtling down around them, she could see no further than two metres in front of herself.

“Well,” Crizanto began, “It’s all basic history. When Aphotians were created, we weren’t the only ones to alter our DNA, Lake Astral is not the only known meta-realm. The Pithors were created, they-”

“Can I write this down?” she butted in, taking out her phone with her free hand and selecting the memo application.

“Just don’t show anyone,” Cris said.

“No one will have a clue about what it means,” she replied, “but I won’t,”

“There are Pithors, wholey just another being born out of the death of an Estrellan, but in a different way, so their magic is different from ours. The Royals preside over them at Lake Losar, their meta-realm, Queen Azlyn rules. There are also Quys, same circumstance, but their magic is over the states; solids, liquids, gases, and some rare Quys control energy. They’re sort of telekinetic. They’re governed by their council of Elders. Also they can’t pass their DNA on, they’re all Chosens like us.

“So many different beings were created in Earth’s Celestial War, but only very few survived to this day. Eventually the Estrellans flew earth, humans can’t ever know about them again or history might repeat itself, and the fourth circle of Angels is completely unknown.”

Genny found it hard to believe that in this day and age humans would have the same reaction to angels coming to earth as they did in the sixteen hundreds. Though if they did exist she couldn’t imagine the effects they’d have on the world that wouldn’t end in disaster.

“There is one other type of Humanic, and they have no connection to Estrellans, their story is unknown for lack of a better word,” Cris continued, “they’re the Eloremen, like shape-shifters they can switch between animal and human phase. This is probably where the myth of werewolves came from, but an Eloremen pack can be any one animal. The two we know are stage and hawks.”

“So there was a sort of peace on Earth, Quys and Eloremen lived in peace, mostly in far Asian countries, so did the Fey and Aphotians. But the Pithors got ahead of themselves and wanted to control humanity, they were called ‘witched’ and many were burnt at the stake in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. But in the middle of the sixteenth century some humans found out about Aphotians, and became jealous, they banded together, and their leader Thad Winch stole the Orb used to create us, which still had Astral’s blood contained. They wanted to change themselves too, out of jealousy,” Crizanto continued to explain, she listened intently.