On the Edge of Insanity by stoleninnocence-insa

Chapter One

On the Edge of Insanity

Tender flesh burns hot from the recent dream. It was fifteen years later and she dreamt of the dark clouds hiding the pale moonlight from sight, the flickering of the ceremonial candles, the whispering of the young and elder trees, and the wise owl answering in kind.

The sacrifice was nothing but a young girl, her age, her friend, Kellie--third grade, sat across from her--was crying softly as if her voice was gone. The outside world stood still for those not inside their protective circle. For one moment, the only thing that separated the people if the world was not skin color, or height, or weight, or religion--no--but sin. The sins, and blood that bathed the soul.

She wanted to cry out, to make it stop, but that would mean the joke was over, she wanted to surprise her dad, but she could smell the liquor, even over the blood. It was so much and yet so little, hot and metallic. Never, as she reached up to touch her own face as if not sure if she was still here, had she felt so light and heavy as she kneeled in the shadows.

The girl looked around wildly, blue eyes constantly resting on hers as if to make her scream out and stop what was going on, but only managed to pin her to the spot. In the shadows, and in the half-light, she felt caught between two worlds and never begin able to fit within them. Without the warmth of the plaid blanket she wrapped around her, she probably would freeze with her startled expression still upon her face.

A gasp escapes, as her cheeks are red from heat. The day she was forever changed. As she remembers returning to that place recently, in the past four years, she remembers crouching upon the dusty ground. Between her fingers rested the last jewel of hope she possessed within her being, or within her reach.

There was no plumed ray of light to perforate the void that has her submitting to her despotism....

The clocked figures dressed in blacks and among them, two in blood red, as they stepped into the protective circle. They joined hands to seal their blood together, for the ceremony.

Her shattered wings golden with her blood drenched into the soil....

There was a voice as it rang through the crisp night. One figure in red stepped forward at the sound of the foreign language to her ears: Gressus anticus; accipio tuus consido. She recognized it now as Latin. Her father had been in the group, she knew because she followed him in his car to surprise him, to play a trick on him. Now, she felt the trick was being played on her.

Hell had tempted them for the last time....

The person who stepped forward through back their hood, and revealed a pale face. The only color on it was the slash of red, smidgen as if violently. Adeleo! The only way to describe it then was a vampire or an insane animal that had recently feed. She rested upon the alter and cutting herself across the wrist, she too added her blood to the fire. She then stepped back, eyes as dark as her hair, turned them to the one in charge of the ceremony, and slashed across his neck. A smirk of satisfaction crossed her dark features.

Kagome's blood turned cold.

The devil was coming; her soul was paralyzed, in a world of faith....

The woman turned to the Kellie, first hesitate, then easily. She picked Kellie up by her neck, even as she screamed for release. She dug her knife into her stomach and watched wit cold eyes as the girl went slump with death. A sob, anger flared.

Here's my check to her--Adima--cash it in the hell you belong....

They looked back to the bushes she hid in. They knew someone was there. The woman dropped the body of Kellie, and with long, hurried strides, rumbled through the bushes. She's already moved, but she saw the lady returned to the ceremony already, and the dead blue eyes staring at her, and the mouth fixed to let out another scream.

She shook her head of the dream and silently cried for the first time in five years.