Purpose by Kristie Cook Page A

it. You’ll be gone.
    What?! I covered my ears with my
hands, as if they could shut out the internal voice. The thoughts
sounded too much like suicide. I had never been suicidal. I
couldn’t do that to Dorian, to my mother, to the Amadis…to Tristan . Even if it were just a thin thread, I really did
have hope.
    Oh, give it up. There’s no hope. No hope for
anything. Like we just agreed, you are fucked. All of you.
    I would never kill myself!
    Then don’t. You have other options, you know.
You do have other family…remember?
    I nearly screamed. Holy shit! What the
hell was happening to me? This was a bigger mind game than Swirly
had ever played.
    Hell. That’s what’s happening to you. It
could be your home. We hold your desires right here. You can have
it all with us. With them…nothing. With us, everything. Your
soul-mate. Your son. You don’t have to worry about having a
daughter with us. We’ll love you and worship you anyway. You can be
our queen. Your king is already here, waiting….
    “Stop it!” I gasped aloud.
    You know this is what you want.
    “No!” I said, louder this time.
    But the voice wouldn’t shut up. It kept
taunting. The evil blood—that of my sperm donor, Lucas, the
Daemoni’s most powerful warrior—coursed like an icy stream through
my veins. I could feel it trying to take over. I curled into a
ball, my hands still over my ears, my eyes squeezed shut, my body
shaking uncontrollably.
    “No. No, no, no !”
    Yes.
    “This is not what I want!” An electric charge
filled the air. The hairs on my arms stood on end and I heard a
crackling sound around me. Again, the pendant heated against my
skin.
    You know it is! Let go, Alexis. Let it all
go. Find comfort with us.
    “No! Please, God, help me!”
    The voice fell silent.
    I trembled so hard, the bed shook under me.
My pulse thudded in my ears, but at least I heard nothing else. I
opened my eyes and remained in a ball, staring at nothing and
praying for the voice to stay away. The energy in the room settled,
as did the pounding in my chest. My blood finally warmed and the
shivering stopped.
    But fear still wrapped itself around me.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. I was half Daemoni, but
not evil. Rina assessed me every time she saw me and said the evil
was repressed, virtually non-existent. So what the hell just
happened?
    Was the state of my mind bringing out the
worst of me? That was certainly possible, I supposed. I suddenly
remembered the lights in Dorian’s window—the two little fires. Had
those been my own eyes? I shuddered again.
    This afternoon and evening with Dorian had
been good. Too good. Almost as if I’d swung into a maniacal state
from the chaos earlier in the day. And now I had to pay for it. The
conversation with Mom and Owen…the realization of just how bad
everything was…an Evil Alexis trying to push her way out…. I would
really lose it at this rate, if I hadn’t already. I just hoped the
good side would win, that Mom would lock me up before I did
anything…bad.
    I couldn’t move. I felt drained of all
energy. I lay there, with the light still on, and squeezed my eyes
shut. I needed to see the beautiful face. I just wanted to go back
to the way things were, when I could count on the same dream,
seeing him every night. I had my miserable moments then, but I was
mostly just foggy and I missed the fog. If I never found Real
Alexis again, I preferred Foggy, who was a hundred times better
than all these other alter egos.
    The memory-dream tried to replay but even my
subconscious mind couldn’t focus—couldn’t make his face clear. I
woke up at 3:39 sobbing and my body burning. It didn’t ache with
soreness from the running. It actually burned as the muscles
repaired themselves from the strain I’d put them through. When I
finally fell back to sleep, the memory-dream didn’t start again.
The slideshow on the mountain played instead…and every time
Tristan’s face started to surface, Owen’s