"Most don’t believe in magic...I have no choice, magic chose me."
Callan O'Neill has a lot to think about, and not just keeping a low profile in school while he has fire bursting from his hands. He's been marked with two prophecies and is keen to prove one of them wrong. Callan's elemental powers - known to a few as the Omega, are growing stronger by the day, time is against him and if he doesn't succeed he will not only lose himself to the power of the Omega, but may well single-handedly put an end to the planet to boot.
Callan believed that he was alone in his abilities - that he was the only one that had these powers - but he discovers that even those closest to him have been keeping the darkest secrets. Even love is put to the test when he discovers that the new girl in school isn't who she appears to be. There aren't only others with powers but others with misguided beliefs that are willing to use their counteractive gifts to protect the Omega and seal the fate of the world.
First Chapter:
1. The Gift
Most don’t believe in magic…I have no choice, magic chose me.
Unrelenting, it has coursed through my veins for most of my fifteen year life. Like a poison it surges through my body with a fire that burns behind my eyes. I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t tired or a time I wasn’t fighting; fighting a silent fight, fighting with myself.
Monday morning, 8am. The nightmares were getting worse. It was the same dream, night after night. I used to only deal with it once or maybe twice a year, but over the past few weeks it had become much more frequent.
I stood before the bedroom mirror trying to rub the familiar tingling feeling from my face but I did it out of habit, as it made little difference to the energy that pulsed beneath my skin. The nightmare roused the magic in my veins like nothing else, taunting it, urging it to break free. My long fight to control the magic, to suppress it, showed on my sweat-beaded forehead and in the greyish pallor of my cheeks. I felt it in my racing heart, trembling hands and boiling blood. It was like a never-ending withdrawal from a drug that could not be smelled, touched or tasted. I was the magical equivalent of an addict in rehab.
It wasn’t the kind of magic that uses potions or spells; no, that would be a real gift. The kind of magic that I had was torment, pure hell. At least, that was my opinion. I couldn’t put my finger on what happened - why I stopped using it. Maybe I saw it for what it was – a curse.
So there it squatted, under my skin, in my veins, bottled-up, burning me from the inside out; a beast that was becoming ever more difficult to keep in check. But I had no choice. I was certain that if I didn’t control the magic, the magic would control me and lives would be at stake.
Pulling a shaky hand through my damp hair I made an attempt to get on with the day. The spot on my bed where I had been sitting since I woke was drenched in sweat. Using limbs that felt like lead, I scraped off the bed sheets and dumped them in to the laundry basket, on my way to the shower. I kept the water cool to sooth my feverish skin. Twenty minutes of standing under the stream of water was enough to calm me down and clear my head. Sometimes the small measures didn’t work. Sometimes I could barely contain the magic and found myself writhing around my bedroom floor in the most unbelievable pain, just wishing I was dead.
I dressed quickly in the black trousers, white shirt and red tie which made up my school uniform and stood in front of the bedroom mirror gazing at my charcoal-black eyes. They gazed back, abnormal and lifeless, shark-like.
Clearing my head of everything- thought, feelings, I took a deep breath and slowly released the tension. In doing so, I managed to tuck away the magic once more behind the closed doors of my mind. My black eyes faded to grey and then finally back to green.
As I glared at my unnatural reflection I had no doubt as to why people kept their distance. They knew that I was different. My dark hair, straight and thick, glistened even in the dim light of my bedroom. My pearly skin smoothed over the harsh angular contours of my jaw and cheeks and of course, my eyes, as artificially green as they come. I didn’t look like a normal teenager. I didn’t even look like a normal human being.
Grabbing my black school blazer from the back of the door I headed down stairs to the kitchen.
Estelle - my aunt, was glaring at me wildly from under her mascara slicked eyelashes, screwing her car keys up so tightly in her clenched fist that her knuckles turned white.
There were many reasons that could invoke that kind of reaction in Estelle. Hell, it was almost the status quo but on that occasion it was because I was late. I’d missed the school bus again. It was the third time in two weeks. I picked up my back pack and began to apologise.
“Save it” Estelle growled, as she pushed her way passed me and headed for the door.
Estelle was my mother’s sister. She was landed with my brother and me by default when our parents died. She had never wanted kids - a career woman to the core, always had been. Estelle was a Fashion Journalist for a popular woman’s magazine and very often away on business. On the rare occasions that she was at home she was largely inconvenienced by just keeping company with me and my brother, me especially.
Estelle was convinced I was on drugs, all of them. She had arranged for counselling for me a few times despite my protests that I had never touched so much as a cigarette in my life. She had even stuck a drugs helpline card to the inside of my en-suite door as she thought that my bathroom was the place that I had chosen as my den of iniquity. But in her defence, I did look like a user. What other reasonable explanation was there for the way I looked? Of course she didn’t know about my real ‘problem’ and there was no way that I could tell her, she’d have me in a mental hospital in the blink of an eye.
The throaty roar of Estelle’s shiny white BMW 4x4 increased as it tore up the street from the house. The car was a gift to her from her minted boyfriend Chris, a self-important worm of a man who my brother and I went out of our way to avoid. But we wouldn’t have an option but to acknowledge his existence if he finally managed to persuade Estelle to marry him.
Estelle pursed her thickly-painted red lips as she ragged the car around the winding country roads. I knew a tongue lashing wasn’t far off.
“I have better things to do with my time Callan…” she began almost as if she could read my mind.
“Estelle…”
“Don’t interrupt me! Haven’t I shown you enough support through this filthy addiction of yours? Can you not even try to repay me with the slightest bit of consideration? I should be at work, not being your chauffeur! Why can’t you be a bit more like your brother? He never seems to get in my way…”
I looked out of the window at the trees- a blur of green and brown as the car picked up speed to match the soaring altitude of her rant. I let her words wash over me.
“Callan, are you even listening to me?” she demanded as the car came to a screeching halt outside of the school gates.
I nodded, avoiding eye contact.
“Get out!” she demanded, “and don’t miss the bus home or you’ll be staying here tonight.”
I had barely closed the door as the car jerked away from the kerb, tyres squealing, kicking up a cloud of dirt in my face. Estelle’s rants hardly bothered me anymore I was so used to it that the words went in one ear and straight out the other. She obviously knew this which wound her up all the more.
St Michael’s Comprehensive was an ugly lump of pre-fab seventies architecture, a scar on the face of Britain. It lacked everything - style, colour, spirit. The people that designed it must have done so on the back of a cigarette packet during their tea-break. The only attractive thing about the school was the large oak tree which guarded the school gates, the trunk of which was almost as wide as it was tall. I took one look at the grey pebble-dashed annex building ahead on the right - the science block which doubled up as my form-room. My nerves started to fidget inside me as I pictured spending another day trying to keep a lid on my ‘gift’.
Taking a deep breath which stuck inside my chest I slumped against the tree. I was in half a mind to walk back out of the gates and spend the day in the cinema across the road. Before I had chance to decide, a burst of energy shot through me, forcing the air from my lungs and I took a painful breath back in. That could only mean one thing- my brother was close by.
“Y’alright kid?” Ethan rasped, appearing from around the other side of the tree.
I turned slowly to meet his sympathetic watery brown eyes. “Thanks for leaving me to the mercy of Estelle this morning. Why didn’t you wake me?
“Sorry, Cal, I went to the gym early. I knew you had a rough night and didn’t want to wake you at that time, but I figured she’d get you up.” He shook his head. “Anyway, don’t avoid the question – you okay?”
I shrugged and looked away. “Sure” I muttered unconvincingly.
I was obviously lying and Ethan knew it. We had this weird connection. I could literally feel when he was near. Every time, without fail, I would get a feeling akin to being given a massive overdose of adrenaline - it burned and my heart thumped but I was completely energised. Ethan, on the other hand, didn’t get the same kick out of me but he could almost read my mind. Empathic, was probably one of the best words to describe him. He always knew how I was feeling and he was almost always around if I was feeling down, rough or threatened. In fact he was there every time I wasn’t happy, which was more or less the existing state of affairs.
Ethan stood directly in front of me so I had no choice but to acknowledge the blatant lie I had just told. He ragged a hand impatiently through his earthy brown hair. His massive shoulders squared up to me. The guy was more buff than the most scary looking rugby player but underneath the mountain of muscle he was as gentle as a lamb. He eyes burned into me, waiting for the truth.
“Alright! So I’m not, I’m not okay. What do you want me to do about it?!” I ranted.
Ethan’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. We both knew exactly what he wanted me to do about it. I screwed up my face in distaste.
“Oh come on Ethan, you know I can’t”.
He shook his head. “How bad is it?” he demanded.
I shrugged one shoulder and looked away.
“How bad?” he repeated, nudging me.
I shook my head again and glared at him with a look of disgust. I could feel the anger begin to well up inside as his eyes burned into me.
“What does it matter to you?” I snapped. “You have no idea what this is like. And honestly, you’re actually starting to tick me off.” I took a few steps in the direction of the science block but didn’t get any further as Ethan’s firm grip clamped tight around my arm.
“What?” I growled.
“You know I care, Cal. I am trying to help you as much as I can,” Ethan affirmed, fixing me with his most serious stare, which was somewhere between having a bad smell up your nose and desperately needing the loo.
My expression didn’t change. I shrugged off his grip, straightened my blazer and headed off to registration without another word.
I knew Ethan cared about me, more so than anyone else. It was probably because he felt responsible, being the eldest brother and all but I didn’t want my problem to become his problem. I wanted to be able to control the thing inside me without his help.
Ethan thought that I was making the pain worse by not using my gift. I knew that there was truth in his reasoning but there was no way I would even consider using the magic around anything that lived. I had to admit that the pain was unbearable at times and it was getting worse by the day. I just hoped that I could control it at the party.
My sixteenth birthday was just under a week away and Estelle was supposed to be throwing a party for me. Well, I say the party was for me but she didn’t really give a stuff about me. It was just an excuse for her to have a gathering of her most pretentious, obnoxious acquaintances at the house so they could compare diamonds and thousand pound shoes and stuff.
Regardless of the reason for the party, she made me promise that I would come out of hiding long enough to greet people, like a good boy. If I felt anything like I did at that moment, they could all go to hell.
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