The Seven: Origins

{Kalo}

After living with creepy Hank, I took to hanging out around old warehouses, bars, clubs, and house parties. I met people but they were all acquaintances rather than friends. But, I did have people that had my back so that was a plus.

When I felt I was in one place for too long, I left. When I'd turned 17, I stopped aging, literally. My hair and nails grew but my body didn't change anymore. It baffled me but I had realized and accepted I was different.

Living in Mississippi, I started knowing when danger was near. It was like I had a radar for it and I sensed it.

Walking home from bars was exceptionally dangerous anywhere for a girl my size. I was only 5'3 and 115 pounds. I didn't carry any weapons on me but I knew I didn't need them.

I was only 10 minutes away from my place, which was on the edge of town, by the woods, when I heard a twig snap. I paused and looked left, seeing a shadow hide deeper into the trees.

"Seriously? You think I didn't hear that? A hurricane would have been quieter than you." I laughed.

"Then I guess I've no reason to surprise you." The man's teeth were jagged and sharp. His irises and what should have been the whites of his eyes were as black as his pupils. I'd never seen anything like him. But instinct told me what he was; a demon.

I froze as he emerged from the woods completely. He stepped closer and I threw myself at him and we fell to the ground. He snarled and I grabbed his face. To anyone passing by, it would have looked like a lovers' quarrel or two scandalous teenagers rolling around in the dirt.

But, fortunately, no one was around as I turned his head sharply and quickly, hearing a loud crack. His mouth opened and a black smoke came out and tried to crawl down my throat. I coughed and it evaporated His body fell, lifeless, on top of mine and I caught my breath as I shoved him off and dragged his corpse into the woods.

When I found a decent sized space, I lit his body on fire and watched it burn. When he was ash, I put the fire out and went home. As I showered and washed away the dirt and sweat, I closed my eyes.

I saw the back of a woman's head. Her hair was colorful. Seven colors weaving around in the wind as she stood in a windy field. I blinked and it was gone. It was like deja vu. I sighed and got out of the shower. I dried off and climbed into bed.

My dreams were havoc. Flames, screaming, and metallic crashing. I got glimpses of the sounds. Swords colliding.

"Swords? I thought this was the 70's not the 17th century." I said to myself in my dream.

"Get down!" A male voice shouted as someone crashed into me from behind. It was a beautiful man. He was at least 18 or 19. I turned over and our eyes met. His were bright white with gold flecks in them. I gasped as explosions erupted around us. He said something but the noises muted his voice. It didn't matter. The way he caressed my face and lips and the look in his eyes would have said it all if I hadn't read his beautiful lips; I love you.

Over the next ten years, I came across more demons. But I never came across someone like me. It made me sad. I hungered for a companion of some sort and the dreams about my white-eyed man didn't help. I looked forward to sleep but I dreaded waking and tearing myself from him.

My face and body refused to change and for some reason, I could never bring myself to change my white waves of hair. I felt as if I'd lose myself.

In the mid 80's, I started taking certain things into my own hands. I took to roaming big cities at night and stopping rape, murder, robberies and other crimes. Sometimes I killed the criminals. Other times, I incapacitated them and instructed victims or witnesses to call the police.

I didn't kill on accident. When I did it, there was a conscious decision made, but it wasn't made by me alone. It was as if someone guided me.

Late that year, in early December, I was in New York. I heard a scream but it wasn't a woman or man. It was a child. I followed the sound into a house and found a little girl, no older than five years old, cowering in the corner of her room. Beside her, a woman lay, bleeding. I hissed and pieced it together as I took in the man standing over them.

This man had come after the girl and her mother had paid for trying to protect her. Even now, in her bloodied face, I saw the determination in her eyes that said he would have to kill her before he laid a finger on her child.

I seized him by his throat. His feet swung off the floor as he gasped in shock. I threw him out of the room and into the hall. I got him to the bathroom and smiled, revealing my extended fangs. His eyes widened in terror.

"Please! Don't kill me! I'll leave and never come back." He pleaded.

"But that won't prevent you from going after someone else's little girl, you revolting swine." I spoke in a robotic ghostly voice, my words sounding as if six or seven of me spoke.

I smiled again as I stepped closer. I covered his mouth and tore his throat out with my fangs. I made sure the blood was in the bathtub. When I was done bleeding him dry, I washed out the tub and went to the bedroom. The woman could barely sit up but she attempted to scramble towards her child.

"Be still. I'll end myself before I harm an innocent. Especially an innocent child." I stepped over toys and reached a hand towards the mother's face. She flinched and the little girl held her mother's head and brushed her hair back.

"It's ok, Mommy. Jesus sent her." The girl reassured her mother. I blinked. Then, I smiled.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Because your shadow has wings."

She smiled back, pointing at the wall. A lamp that had been knocked over, cast my shadow upon the far wall. As I turned to face it, I saw great wings folded in towards me. I gasped softly.

I turned and kneeled again and placed my hand on the woman's chest. I closed my eyes and spoke to God, asking for his assistance. I heard the girl and her mother gasp and I opened my eyes in time to see the glowing light fade from my hand. The woman's injuries were gone although her blood remained, the only evidence that she had been hurt.

"When I leave, do not report him missing. If anyone comes looking for him, say he left this night and you never saw him again." I instructed.

"Did she kill him?" The woman thought.

"Yes." I answered aloud.

She looked at me, blinked, and nodded. She stood and picked up her daughter.

"What are your names?" I asked.

"I'm Hannah and this is my daughter, Savannah." She told me.

"I'm Kalo. Maybe we'll meet again one day. Be careful." I turned and left, taking the man's body and burning it in a dumpster.

I went home that night, seeing the wings on my shadow. Did God truly send me here to protect people? Was I really an angel? My mind raced as I lay in bed.

If I was an angel, that meant I was not alone. There had to be others like me. God surely wouldn't send one lone angel...unless I was cast out. But wouldn't He take my wings even from my shadow? Wouldn't I be evil? Wouldn't I..?

I had many questions but seeing as it was nearly impossible to find my kind, those questions remained unanswered.

I left New York that very night and went to North Carolina. I had nightmares. I was on a battlefield. But the battlefield was a street in New York. Guns fired, explosions went off, screams sounded from every direction. I was crouched behind an overturned car. Beside me, a girl with yellow and black dreadlocks was looking towards her target. She had a sniper rifle. I reached for her but suddenly she ran and a bullet hit right where her head had just been.

I followed her to an alley, out of the line of fire. But she was gone by the time I got there. I heard an engine and saw a dune buggy of all vehicles, speed by my alley. The driver had bubblegum pink hair and standing in the back of it, firing a machine gun was another female with short razored blood-red hair.

As she turned to glance at me, someone tapped my shoulder and I whirled. The girl with blue hair didn't meet my eyes. She simply motioned for me to follow her.

We ran through the alley and went into a back entrance of the nearest building. We hurried up the stairs and I noticed she had a bow and arrow, but that's it. Didn't she know there was a war going on outside? What the hell would one arrow do to protect her from bullets and bombs?

She flung open a door and inside was a room full of monitors. Sitting in front of them, typing on a laptop was yet another girl with purple hair. She didn't bother looking up to see who entered. The other side of the room looked like a science class. A girl with green pigtails was leaning over a microscope.

"Cadance, you done with that shit yet?" The girl with the dreadlocks entered, followed by the two girls from the dune buggy, hugging the blue-haired girl.

"Kendra, I will be finished as soon as I can." The green-haired scientist answered without looking up.

"Stop calling me that. My name is Kennie." Dreads replied.

I couldn't take it anymore. I started gasping.

"Why won't anyone look at me?!" I shouted. Everyone paused. Then they all moved towards me as if realizing I was there. I glanced at all their faces, knowing I was about to wake.

I sat up in bed, sweating and gasping. I'd seen their faces but I could not remember any of them.

The whole day went by ridiculously slow. I went to the store for food at around three that afternoon and felt chills. Something bad was about to happen.