The Third and Fourth

Raine & Luke

There's no one else. It's only us. No one understands what we're capable of, most are even scared. We can make things move without touching them, change the color of the leaves without a change in season. We can start fire where there's water, and change a liquid to a solid, all with a wave of our hand.

We're powerful. We're dangerous. We could take down the whole world.

And there's only two of us on the planet.

I swing my arm, letting to white ball fly through the air when I let it go. Within seconds I hear a crack, like something hitting metal. Hard. I watch the ball fly up and over my head, out into the grassy field behind me.

"Oh! Home run, baby!" Raine calls, a hand over her eyes to shield the sun as she watches to ball roll to a stop in the outfield. "Huh? Huh? Wasn't that great?"

"Yeah, only 'cause you have a great pitcher." I say, shrugging and picking up another ball from the bucket at my side. Only three balls are left, not including the one I just picked up.

Eight balls sit in the outfield and three rest behind Raine, being the ones she didn't hit or I pitched badly. I remember pitching one so high by accident that it almost hit the top of the very tall fence behind Raine. Being Raine, she said, "I'm down here, smarty pop. The bat doesn't have extensions." I laughed and pitched another, which was her fourth ball into the outfield.

"Yeah, yeah." Raine says to my "great pitcher" remark. "I can see it now: Raine Jakar and Luke Jakar - the twin baseball players." She says, grinning at me like a fame-obsessed fool.

"Baseball?" I ask. "But you're a girl. Stick to the softball, chicky, you're not meant for the big leagues."

"Oh, Luke, I'll make it someday. Sure, I might already be nineteen years old, but so are you! You have as much of a chance as me out there. Now pitch the damn ball." She whines, getting in her batting stance.

I roll my eyes and pitch the damn ball, aiming for her head. I pitch it fast so she has no time to react. But being a wizard, she dodges it anyway and it hits her shoulder instead. "Cheater!" I yell to her.

"You were aiming for my head!" She protests. "I had the right, you oblivious-to-self-defense weirdo! Pitch the damn ball the right way!"

I pick up the third to last ball and look at it, making a sad face. "Did you hear that? Don't let her disrespect you." I say, loud enough for Raine to hear. I throw the ball too fast for her make up her mind and it flies right passed her.

"Strike!" I say in the referee tone.

Raine rolls her eyes. "How many balls are left?" She asks.

"Two." I say, tipping over the bucket, letting the two balls fall out. Raine picks up the four balls behind her and throw them at me. I put them in the bucket and pick up the other two. "You done or am I pitching these back at you?"

"Nah I'm done. Let's go get the eight that are in the outfield, all of which are home runs." She brags, strutting passed me like she's famous.

I walk with her to the outfield and we start picking up the balls and rolling them toward the bucket at pitcher’s mound.

Raine and I are wizards. Cool, isn't it? Yeah, it's awesome sometimes, especially when you can do anything to your command. How did it happen? It was kind of like a "struck by lightning" sort of thing. Raine and I nearly did get struck when we were fifteen. We nearly died, both of us. We were in a tree when it happened, and when it did it pushed us out of the tree. Raine and I just lay there on the ground for hours; both of us thought we would die. We couldn't move, we were paralyzed, and we couldn't call for help.

When we finally regained consciousness something felt different, we felt not only powerful but also inhuman. Like we could do anything, we had something weird running through our veins.

We eventually fully regained our health and realized we had some sort of powers that weren't . . . human. We compromised and decided that we shouldn't tell anyone about what happened, not even our parents. We eventually classified ourselves as wizards after a few days of research.

And after four years the only person who knows about us is our uncle, Rupin. Raine and I graduated highschool last year but neither one of us decided to move out yet. We told our parents we weren't going to college yet but didn't tell them it was because we're wizards and going off to college alone was too risky. We told them it was because we had better things in mind - which we don't. Raine works at a book store and I at a car shop in downtown. There's no up-road from there. And our dreams of becoming baseball players are a long-shot that will never happen.

Uncle Rupin is our dad's brother. We told him only because he caught us using our powers. One day Raine foresaw a kid about to drown in the pool we were at and I used levitation to get him out of the water. We did our best to erase everyone's memories but I can't say the same for Rupin. Our mind sweeping of that event wore off on him and he confronted us about it a few days later.

For the past couple of days, Raine and I have been discussing whether or not to go to Rupin with a recent problem we stumbled upon. Raine recently foresaw an event taking place in the near future and we needed to take action, soon. She told me she saw a kid leaned over a human, a woman. Blood was running from her throat and from the kid's mouth. The kid looked to be only a year or two younger than us and Raine said she saw he had fangs.

The pure fact that there's another immortal out there, wizard or not, is enough for us to do something about it. 

"Say we talk to Rupin." Raine says, opening the debate back up. I've told her a thousand times that I don't want to confront him about it but she keeps arguing with me. Admittedly, she's come up with some good reasons to talk to him, but I'm not convinced. "And we decide to go -"

"We? Whoever said I'm going?" I interrupt.

"Would you let me go alone?" Raine asks, raising an eyebrow at me.

". . . No." I mutter after a pause.

She grins and then continues. "And we decide to go find the vampire. How would we get our parents to let us go in the first place?"

I don't like the idea of going, but with Raine - and probably Rupin as well - against me, I'll probably cave in soon anyway. I can't blame Raine for trying to think ahead. "I - I don't know. Hypnosis?" I shrug.

Raine considers it for a minute then says, "You would actually use your powers for evil? Oh, Luke, you little rule breaker."

"There was never a rule that said I couldn't." I mutter. "Hypnosis, that's our plan. There's no other way they'll let us go."

Raine has used her powers more times than you could imagine. Hypnosis won't be a problem for her. She foresees things all the time, it's her specialty. I haven't found my specific specialty yet but I've used my individual powers a couple dozen times. But I've never used it for evil.

But what other choice do we have? Our parents don't know we're wizards, no one but Raine and I and Rupin know. How else would we explain this to them? We have to. It's the only way to go.

"I really think we should talk to him, Luke." Raine says. She puts the balls she gathered in our large, white bucket and then stands in front of me with her arms crossed. "There's no reason not to."

"What if we tell him we're going to go find the vampire? What if he disagrees? Are you going to let him stop us? No. So what will he do then? He'll tell our parents. That's one reason not to; I can probably come up with three more. He can -"

"Luke, listen to me." Raine interrupts me. "Rupin won't do that, he's been supportive of our decisions so far. He didn't tell our parents the real reason why we didn't go to college. He didn't tell our parents how that kid at the pool two years ago was really saved. He hasn't told our secret to anyone -"

"As far as we know." I put in.

"- And he won't." Raine continues. "I think we can trust him, Luke. Ok? Please, just trust me to trust him. What's the worst that could happen? By the time he tells our parents, we'll be long gone anyway. We live in North Carolina, that event I foresaw happened in Michigan. If we teleport, we could be in Michigan in an hour."

I stare at her for a long time. I'm close to caving in but I'm also close to just telling her to drop it and that we're not going to go find the vampire at all.

"If it makes you feel better, we don't have to tell him where we're going." Raine taunts me. "That way, at least he can't come with us and try to stop us."

"Raine . . ." I say, looking at her while I consider it. There's a lot of holes in this plan, a lot of things that could go wrong. What would we get out of finding this vampire? He could kill us. But then again, as far as we know we're the only immortals on the planet. It would be amazing to find another one. To find someone who understands the burden of keeping all this secret, to compromise together on who we can trust and see if he knows any other immortals.

The worst that could happen is that we get severely hurt.

"Ugh, fine!" I finally say. "We'll go confront Rupin about this, ask for his advice. But if he says no, that we shouldn't do it, tell him we won't go. Whether we - just you and I - decide to go or not, if he tells us we shouldn't go then just tell him we won't. And don't tell him the location of where you foresaw the vampire."

"Oh, goodie!" Raine cheers, a smiling spreading across her face. "Thank you, Luke!" Her smile grows wide and she picks up the bucket with the baseballs in it and starts skipping back toward our house.

"Hey! Don't drop the baseballs!" I yell after her. After she's out of earshot, I say to myself, "She must be going crazy. There's no way we're surviving this."

Author's Note

I did a re-write of this on November 14th, 2011. In the last version, their uncle Rupin was in it and I just decided that there were a few things to fix and it would be better to leave out Rupin until the next chapter about Raine and Luke.

Reviews

[Damac]

Very nice, I liked the tone and the idea of twin characters with developed personalities.

[Jacques]

I love this chapter originally and i love it even more with this re-do . i think it was better to leave out Rupin to give some more interaction and starting growth for Luke and Raine but i still like that you mentioned Rupin so when you introduce him properly in the next chapters , it's like who the heck is this Hahaha. if i was an immortal from this book , i would probably want to be a Wizard , i think because you have indivual powers other than a specific power . really good re-do .

[Jacques]

This has to me my favourite . I love the fact that the Third and the Fourth are twin immortals . Wizards have always fascinated me and drawn me in as there's so much that you make them do and different personalities for each wizards . i like how your connecting the dots - Vampire i assume that is Adam in Michigan near Lake Huron where Michelle and her Family is on Vacation or where . i like how Raine and Luke are twins and wizards but are different i think you could maybe give more detail on how they became who they are today - i know you did but then again i'm contradicting myself here sometimes litte detail is sometimes the best actually as it opens the reader's imagination from the details you've gave us . i don't know how to explain this but this book is becoming something to crave . Ilove the concept and the characters . top marks - very well done BRAVO