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What Is Your Center?	By : LuciferDragon Category: +M through R > Rise of the Guardians Views: 1676 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Rise of the Guardians world, and I make no profit at all from this fiction.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
I observed my work from afar in a New England town, one of my particular favorites to visit. It was closing in on two in the morning now. The rush of the holiday was over, and I had had my fill of fear. My helpers did their part, and they were now off terrifying the lone wolves out, the ones seeking to prove they were braver than they really were.
I overheard one such group of teens say something of the sort. They were daring each other to enter the dilapidated house on the edge of town. They insisted it was haunted, and I wouldn’t argue that. I had made a deal with the spook that inhabited the house many years ago. The spirit had died from despair over his daughter’s unfortunate and early demise. He had been taking care of her after her mother had passed from illness. I had located her and swore to let her visit on All Hallows so long as he swore to work for me. It was an easy trade-off. The spirit didn’t have to do much, just rattle a few windows to scare children passing by. They would usually quicken their paces or scream for their mothers.
One of the men in the group of four pulled his other male companion to the side. “C’mon Jimmy, it’s just a house. We can do this.” He looked to the two waiting females. “Besides, you can give a comforting arm to Jessica, if you know what I mean.” The darker skinned male waggled his eyebrows at the paler man, still in his vampire costume.
The one known as Jimmy rolled his eyes at his werewolf-donned friend. “I told you to back off with that, man. We’ll do that when we feel like it. Just because Jess wants to wait doesn’t mean anything.”
“Uh-huh, sure. And I don’t know if you saw the weather forecast. They said pigs were going to fly.”
I could see Jimmy rolling his eyes again. “Believe what you want, Kris. And besides, a haunted house? That’s the worst place to have sex for the first time.”
I had to disagree, but that was just my warped lifestyle. I leaned forward on the fence I had been standing behind, invisible to the humans.
“Have it your way,” Kris answered. “I’ll be with Latoya. You know, since she actually spreads her legs.” He shook his head. “I mean, damn, I know that sounds bad, but after two years and still nothing from Jess?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Her family is super religious, dude. Just drop it.”
“Your loss, man.” He parted from his friend and joined up with the girls, pulling one dressed in a witch costume into a tight embrace. “So we all ready to check out this tacky place?” He grinned to both girls as Jimmy approached as well. “You two aren’t scared, are you?”
The lighter skinned female dressed as a bee scoffed and folded her arms. “Puh-lease Kris. It’s just an old shack, nothing more to it.” She adjusted her costume and looked to her boyfriend. “Besides, you can take it, right Jimmy?”
He grinned. “Of course I can. Just like you said, just an old shack.”
Latoya was the only one to look nervous. “I don’t know, guys. I mean, my dad grew up near here. He said it’s no joke. He was friends with the daughter that died and knew about the father’s suicide afterward.”
“Just means we’ll have to check it out,” Kris said. “We’re stupid teenagers still. We’re supposed to do stupid things like trespass.”
She rolled her eyes. “If we die I’m haunting your ass, I hope you know.”
I watched them head towards the house, laughing at their plans, thinking themselves so brave. I knew the spirit would not be up for actually scaring the kids silly. Usually what he did was mild and in good fun. At the moment, he’d be wandering the gardens with his daughter, catching up on what was going on. He wouldn’t be aware of anything going on in his domicile.
And I was pretty famished.
I slipped through the shadows, entering the house well before they did, emerging in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I crept into the hallway, leaning against the rails, watching the door slowly creak open. I smirked as I felt their trepidation growing. I just needed them a little more scared to start feeding off their fear. As soon as they were clear of the door, I sent a tendril of will to it, slamming it closed behind them. The shrieks of the girls ran up my spine in such a pleasant way, letting a shiver erupt over my skin.
“Just the wind,” Kris said, rubbing his hands up Latoya’s bare arm. “C’mon baby, we got this.”
I hummed in amusement and glanced up at the chandelier above their heads. With a twist of my wrist, I sent my shadows to it, making the dangling glass chime as it moved.
“I don’t like this,” Latoya said as their tension continued to grow.
Children’s fear was a delicacy, yes, but for a young adult, it was sweeter. Their imaginations still ran wild like a child, though they understood they were not indestructible. They knew that they could die. Too many tragedies in the world taught them that.
I had to draw out the night. It had been a long time since I was able to enjoy myself. The sensation of absorbing terror was second only to sex for me. A creak of the floorboards in the room I had entered in drew my attention to it. I narrowed my eyes and brushed it off as the house itself creaking as houses tended to do.
I watched the kids shuffle into the old parlor, and I didn’t even have to do anything for the next scare. An old Grandfather clock chimed off to the side, making them all jump and scream. I couldn’t help but laugh. They were such easy prey.
I had kept my voice still muted from them, but they could still feel something off in the house. Jessica gripped on to Jimmy’s arm. “I don’t like this. We should go.”
Jimmy nodded to Kris. “Yeah dude, this place ain’t right.”
“You’re just fucking paranoid,” Kris answered. “It’s an old house. There’s a draft in here somewhere.”
I leaned off the railing and kept my footsteps light as I wandered to a window pane, holding my nails to it. I slowly dragged them down, making the glass shriek under the sharp tips.
“What if what they’re saying is true?” Latoya asked with a shaky tone. “Not about the guy who died here, but…”
Kris scoffed, more to steady his nerves. “What, that the Boogeyman really exists? Stop listening to your little sister. She’s just a kid.”
My anger snapped. They thought I was Pitch messing with them? How dare they?
A familiar chuckle rose to my right and I glanced over. I sneered at the doorway. “What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed. “This is my night, not yours.”
Pitch merely shrugged and crossed his arms, leaning into the doorframe. “Apparently they think it’s me. Shall we let them believe so? It wouldn’t take much to prove it. You’ve gotten them riled up enough.”
I advanced on him, still livid at his appearance. I shoved him into the old bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me, knowing very well the sound would scare the kids more. “Stay out of this!”
He put a hand over his heart in mock sincerity. “I’ve done nothing but regain my title. Parents have begun to tell their children the old stories that I will take the naughty ones away in the night and eat them.” He gave his crooked smile. “And what recognition have you gotten tonight?”
I curled my lip. “I don’t need recognition. I represent everything to do with tonight. So long as people celebrate, I have what I need to survive.” I gestured to the door. “Those kids are my last target for the night.”
“And I see you’re doing a bang-up job of scaring them,” he responded, sarcasm dripping from his words.
“Just because they think it is you doesn’t matter.” I felt my anger start to slip. “What are you even doing here?”
“Watching you slip up in what you do best. Is that all you can do on your own? Petty parlor tricks?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re infuriating.” I turned my back to him and went to leave the bedroom. I was stopped and spun around and backed into the door hard enough to make the sound echo.
“I’m infuriating?” He put his hands to the door, keeping me in place. “I didn’t promise to help you and then take off at the first chance.”
“That isn’t why I left,” I said calmly. “You’ve done well enough for yourself the past seven months. Well enough that Jack came to see me to tell you to back off.”
He really did look angry then. “It isn’t Frost’s place to seek you out.”
“Yes, especially not after you threatened his life if he did.” I arched my brow. “I wonder why that is.”
“He looked at you wrong.” He leaned in closer. “What did he do?”
“Told me to find you to tell you to leave the children alone. I told him to leave, he wouldn’t. He confessed he had admired me for some time.” I rolled the rest of the encounter around in my head. He was angry already, and I didn’t care about the repercussions. “He kissed me.”
I could feel his grip slacken. I refused to tell him that I broke it off immediately afterward in disgust. “I’ll kill him.”
“I do not belong to you anymore, Pitch Black. I haven’t for a long time. If I really wanted to lie with another man, I would.”
“But you haven’t.”
He had me there. I hadn’t bothered to look. I wasn’t lying when I told him all those months ago that I had no time to seek out companionship. And fucking humans was well beneath me. “It isn’t like you haven’t done the same.”
“I haven’t. Hard to do so when no one can see you, when no one can hear you but children. And when anything you could touch is a human. I refuse.” He curled his lip. “What else did he do?”
“I made him leave.” I used his slacked grasp to get out of the way. “You don’t need to kill him over something so trivial.”
“No, I suppose I don’t. I can maim him, at least.”
I let out a breath of a laugh and looked at him again. “Really, don’t. I took care of it. I would have been able to stop him if he tried anything else.”
“Would you now?”
“I can protect myself. Besides, it is Halloween. You know first-hand what I am capable of tonight. If I don’t want something to happen, it won’t.”
His gaze grew darker, but he grinned all the same. “Is that so?”
I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head. As I was about to answer, I heard one of the other doors upstairs open and close, closely followed by another. I cracked a grin of my own. “Teenagers are so predictable. Give them a private place and they’ll ruin it in a moment.”
“Not just teenagers.” There was a subtle growl to his words, sending a shiver up my spine. “What should we do with them?”
“We?” I scoffed, not able to believe his gall. “No, there is no ‘we’ here.”
“And why not? We’ve had great results in the past.”
I couldn’t argue that point. Granted, it had been a hundred years ago, and people were a bit easier to scare in 1912 and earlier. The results had always been grand. I could only do so much at a time on my own. With a mental sigh I crossed my arms. “What do you have in mind, Oogie?”
He seemed to catch on to the change in nicknames. His face turned thoughtful as he paced around me, making me feel very uncomfortable. He knew I hated pacing. “How well can you still act?”
I repressed a shiver that wanted to trickle down my spine as he ran a finger over my exposed shoulders peeking out of my crop top. I jumped as he gripped the front of the already loose shirt and ripped it almost in half. “What the hell!”
“As terrifying as you can be, I’d like to see you play a different role for this, given circumstances.”
“Which is what?” I narrowed my eyes in confusion as he opened a vein on his arm with a sharpened nail. He trickled the blood over my chest, making three large mock gashes. He could have just put the real things there to make it authentic, but he didn’t. “A victim of what?”
He gripped my arm with a bloody palm, leaving a solid imprint. “A victim of me, of course.”
I couldn’t stop the grin that slipped as his wound vanished. “So full of yourself.” My heart skipped a beat as he mussed up my short hair a bit.
“I’m just aware of my talents,” he rumbled, his voice lowered. “All of them.”
The tingle in my spine returned, and my hands twitched against my restraint, almost giving in to tossing him to the bed behind us and staying there until morning. This was exactly the reason I had been avoiding him. I couldn’t stop my body from reacting to even the smallest of touches. My eyes widened and my hands flew up to stop him as I felt him tug on my choker.
“It’s part of the appearance, Hana.”
I could stand the marks on my wrists; they didn’t show anything in particular. The only scars on my body that bothered me was the mark of my death. Before my eyes the villagers called for the end. I pain tightened around my throat. I blinked and it was all gone. My fingers gripped his coat tightly.
“It still pains you, doesn’t it?”
I could only nod and lean my head against his chest.
“The collar stays on then.”
I had expected him to rip it off. Or tell me to suck it up. How much had he changed? He was still the same man in many ways, but not all of them. Was Hessian right?
“I think we’ve given them enough silence to grow comfortable again,” he said, not bothering to unlatch my hands. “How well can you shriek?”
“Not the best in the world, but still believable.”
“Then it is time I told you exactly how to get every drop of terror out of those adolescents.”
I pulled away from him in time to see his crooked smile grow. I gave him a grin of my own. “Just like old times.”
- 5
- 6
- 7
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What Is Your Center?