The Clinic: Test Ten (mild language, sexual conduct)

**Katherynn** · 10-12-2012 05:19 PM

Test Ten
Feiral and Jate’s eyes widened in surprise and confusion as they looked at one another before returning to my own.
My head spun and I blinked as I tried to focus. Exhaustion pulled at me and, no matter how hard I tried to fight it, it only pulled me down farther.
“Za…ien,” I breathed as the ground raced to met me.

The sound of dishes scraping against one another woke me up. It was an unfamilair sound and I’d only heard it while working in the kitchen.
I sat up and realized that I was on a couch with a blanket covering me. A few feet away was a kitchen where someone stood inside.
My eyes looked him over and I froze immediately.
“Zaien?” I breathed, standing.
The male turned around and, instead of icy green eyes, I met icy blue ones. Aside from that, it looked like Zaien one hundred percent.
“Who?” the male asked. “I’m sorry. But I’m not Zaien. My name is Kine. Kine Rite.”
Rite. That was Zaien’s last name.
“Hey, Kine,” a female voice said, coming from the door way. “I’m back with the groceri—”
The female’s voice cut off as she walked in the room. She stopped mid-sentence when she saw me.
My eyes widened in disbelief as I looked at her. I knew her.
“Something wrong, sis?” Kine asked, taking the bags from her. “Do you know this girl?”
“N-No,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t think so. Where did you find her?”
“She was passed out on the side of the road. Her clothes were mangled so I gave her some of yours. Was that okay?”
“That’s fine,” she said hesitantly.
She took my hand and half dragged me upstairs. I nearly fell while trying to climb them.
When we were in the saftey of her room, she finally spoke.
“Claire,” she asked in disbelief. “Is that really you? Claire Venue?”
“Celti?”
She threw her arms around me and hugged me to her tightly.
“Oh my God, Claire,” she cried out. “What are you doing here?! How did you get here?!”
“I turned sixteen a few days ago,” I gasped, hugging her back. “And then I went and met the Reapers.”
She pulled back and I knew immediately that she had gotten serious. I could tell it in her eyes that resembled Zaien’s.
“Do you know what you are?” she asked calmly. “Or, are you human?”
I gave her a confused look and she sighed, holding out her hand. I gave her my own hesitantly.
“Stay calm, I’m not going to kill you,” she said calmly, producing a knife. “This won’t hurt that badly.”
Celti pricked the middle of my palm and slid the knife across it, drawing blood.
I winced and Celit dropped the knife, cursing, as she jumped away. Her eyes grew cold and she glared at me.
“You’re a mage?!” she hissed.
I held up my hands defensively and shook my head rapidly.
“I don’t know!!” I said, my voice jumpy. “I was tested by Jate and then I blacked out. One of the Reapers said ‘mage’ but I didn’t know what he was talking about. And then I saw my mom and she told me Jate and Feiral were my siblings and—”
“Pause,” she said, inching back towards me. “You mean, you don’t know anything?”
I shook my head, my eyes pleading.
She grabbed a notebook and sat on her bed, patting the space beside of her.
“Alright,” she said as I took my seat. “It’s safe since you don’t know yet but I don’t suggest you stay near us for very long. It won’t be safe when your kind come and find you.”
“My kind?”
“Your kind,” she said, nodding. “You’re a mage. You’re basically a witch. I’m guessing you don’t know how to use your powers yet so there’s a bunch of built up power that is uncontrolled and has accumulated over the course of sixteen years.
“There’s an entire system of everyone that exists in the world. It can be categorized into four groups—humans, werewolfs, mages, and vampires.”
She paused and wrote the four titles on a piece of paper along with lines connecting them all in some way.
“Humans are just kind of there,” she said calmly, scribbling notes on the paper. “Nonhumans tend to not mess with them and it’s sort of a taboo to fraternize with them.
“Vampires and werewolves have this sort of treaty that keeps them in check. Werewolves don’t mind mages but there’s an all out war-type thing going on with mages and vampires.
“It’s beyond taboo for a mage to be caught with a vampire. Since they were young, mages and vampires were meant to hate one another.”
Vampires? Werewoves? Mages?
Did they even exist?! It would make sense and answer some questions if they did. It would explain a lot.
You can't be near me! I'm dangerous! All of the Guards and Doctors are! You need to stay away from us! Live in your happy little life while you can!
Zaien had told me that—was that what he meant? That there were no humans in the Clinic except for, possibly, the Patients?
“Then what exactly is the Clinic?” I asked, voicing a question I had run over and over inside of my head.
“The Clinic itself is a building comprised of vampires,” she explained. “The Guards and Doctors are strictly vampires. The Patients are anything. The Clinic is a facility meant to raise nonhumans and, when they turn sixteen, determine what they are in the nonhuman community.
“Sometimes there are humans but they are rare.”
Nonhumans. Vampires. The Guards were vampires? Feiral and Jate were vampires? There was no way. Yet, something inside of me told me it was true.
That meant Zaien was a vampire.
“How did you escape?” I breathed, trying to let all of the information sink it. “And Kren—I saw him. He helped open the Circle.”
I blinked. Circle? With a capital C? How did I know that? Was it a mage ability?
“I was a vampire,” she explained. “My entire family is. It’s the Rite line. Kine is a vampire, too. As well as Zaien.”
My heart skipped a beat and I hoped that she hadn’t heard it. By the look on her face I had guessed that she had.
“Are there any abilites I should know about? Restrictions? Powers?”
It sounded ridiculous but I knew it was true. How, I didn’t know but, hopefully, I would get answers to that now.
“Werewolves—and all other types of shifters—can shift shape into their guardian animal,” she said, ticking off things on her fingers. “Catch is that they can’t shift on a full moon. Total opposite of the movies.”
I gave her a confused look and she shook her head, knowing that I had no idea what movies were. I’d heard of them but I’d never experienced one.
“Vampires need blood to survive,” she said, continuing. “Which is the catch. Our bodies don’t produce blood-oxygen cells normally so we need to feed off of blood to survive. It has to be human, though. Animal blood and human don’t mix.
“Feeding to us is kind of like a transfusion. You have to have the same blood type or it doesn’t work. It’s the opposite with werewolves. They have an overabundance.
“The goodside to vampires is that, like werewolves, we have super speed and heightened senses. Some even have other powers like mind reading or compulsion.”
She crossed off vampires, humans, and werewolves on the paper and tapped ‘mages’ with her pencil.
“Mages are different in entirety,” she said slowly. “They are the most human-like out of all of us. They don’t rely on blood to survive and they don’t have to shift shape.
“They are supernatural humans with extremely powerful magick that is devistating to vampires and werewolves. Werewolves side with mages because they view them as being more human-like. A mage attacked a vampire, killing it, and that’s where the whole war against one another began.”
“What’s the catch?” I asked timidly.
Celti’s green eyes met mine and I fought back the urge to cringe. Her gaze fell to the paper again before she finally replied.
“Mages can’t lie.”
Night Eleven
I stared at my hands and the marks that sat on my palms now. They were intricate designs that looked like Greek letters overlapping.
I had made out ‘Ψ’, ‘Ξ’, ‘Φ’, and ‘Χ’ on my left hand which were ‘PSI’, ‘XI’, ‘PHI’, and ‘CHI’. On my left I had made out ‘ζ’, ‘ε’, ‘η’, ‘ρ’, and ‘ϊ’ which I somehow knew were ‘ZETA’, ‘EPSILON’, ‘ETA’, ‘RHO’, and ‘IOTA’.
They had appeared in a turquiose-colored ink after the wound Celti had made healed. I stared at them as if they would disappear in a second if I were to stop looking.
“Claire, up for some dinner?” Kine asked, popping his head in the room. He reminded me of Pes and Jamie. “Or are you still tired?”
“I’ll eat,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be down soon.”
When he left my smile fell as my mind drifted back to the Clinic and all of the questions I had.
Why had Byren been with Jate and Feiral? Why had he turned so cold suddenly? Pes and Jamie—they were vampires? How was everyone? It would be Byren’s birthday soon. Would he go through what I went through?
What had happened to Zaien? Why didn’t Kine remember him? Why wasn’t Celti telling him? And what about my mother? What did she mean when she said Jate and Feiral were my siblings?
There was so much I still didn’t know. So much I wanted to know but had no answers for.
I stood and went downstairs in a half-hearted attempt to show them that I was really okay.
My heart was in worse condition than my body. Apparently, being a mage came in handy when wounds came into play.
I sat at a rectangular wooden table sat in the kitchen. Kine set a plate in front of me and I glanced over it’s contents. It wasn’t as extravagant as what I’d eaten in the Clinic but the fact that I hadn’t eaten a thing in nearly three days made me not care one way or another.
Before I knew it the entire plate was gone.
“Did you want seconds?” Kine asked, looking from the plate to me a few times before keeping his gaze rested on me. “Or are you done?”
“I’m finished, thank you,”I said with a forced smile.
And it wasn’t a lie—I was finished. Even though I hadn’t eaten in three days that didn’t keep me from old habits. The food at the Clinic had always left me full after very little so eating little was normal to me.
Celti—even after all of these years—still held the same habit. It was obvious by the way she slid her food around on her plate.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” I said calmly. “I think I need some air.”
Kine opened his mouth to say something but the look he got from Celti told him to stay quiet. Thankfully, he did.
I walked out the front door and sidestepped the sidewalk, deciding on using the grass.
I was in what seemed to be a meadow in the woods. One lone tree stood out in the field by a small creek. Though everything was beautiful I couldn’t help but be drawn to the tree.
Don’t move. Don’t even try to escape.
I climbed into the tree and rested on a branch as the memories flooded into my mind.
“Like what you see?”
“Thank you.”
I dug my nails into the tree bark as the tears fell with the memories. Him catching me. Him telling me he loved me. Him trying to get me to calm down.
I let out a choked sob and half curled into a ball.
There was no hope. I would never see him again. He was gone to me. There was nothing left. He was completely and utterly gone.
Had he even thought about me? Was he even worried? Was he even tring to find me? What was he doing right now?
“Claire Venue.”
I looked down and met siamese-blue cat eyes that, somehow, reminded me of my own. They belonged to a woman.
“Yes?”
The woman had dark red hair that was more of a burgundy color than anything else that fell to the middle of her back. Her eyes and lips were artfully done and her build reminded me of the build many scandanavians had.
She was about six-one and wore what looked to be a black cloak. There was too much silver-white fur for it to be discernable, though.
“My name is Rho,” she said calmly. “Rho Akov. I am the Guardian Mage of Russia.”
I tensed and met her cat eyes again before sliding down the tree. Something about her reminded me of myself but that didn’t mean that I trusted her…yet.
“What do you want?” I asked slowly, edging my way around the tree. “How did you find me?”
“You’re a mage,” she said, her dark red lips tilting up in a half smile. “Any mage can find a mage they know but Guardian Mages can find any mage they please. And with your power, you’re hard to miss.”
“What is a Guardian Mage? How did you get here so fast? If you’re from Russia, why don’t you have an accent?”
She laughed and I winced at the sound. It was like high pitched bells turned up too loud on a loud speaker.
“I can fall into my home born language and time I vish,” she said, slipping into a Russian accent before switching back. “But I prefer the English dialect when I’m in America.”
All I did was nod and she answered my remaining two questions.
“Guardian Mages are powerful mages that govern above all of the mages in their area. My area covers Russia to Germany and down to Mongolia. The Guardian Mages lie in a Council of a selected six. When you’re a mage as old as I, you tend to know how to get to somewhere very quickly.”
A hidden note was under her voice but I had a feeling that there was something more to come from her.
“May I see your hands?” she asked, smiling. “If it is alright with you, I mean.”
I held out my hands, palms up, and she looked them over, smiling.
“Well, well, well,” she said, her voice satisfied . “It looks like I was right about you, after all. Would you be so kind as to do me a favor?”
“I don’t trust you,” I said before I could think to stop myself. “But…I want to know more. What do you want me to do?”
Her smile told me she already knew and, somehow, that made me even more upset.
“I want you to think of a person. Imagine they’re in front of you.”
I tried without hesitation and jumped when the figure began to form. The form evaporated and she told me to try again.
The air twisted and shaped, spinning and convulsing, before finally drawing out the finer details like colors and more defined shapes.
In seconds, Zaien stood before me.
“Good job,” she said satisfactorally. “Talk to him. Interact with him. I want to see if you can keep him solid.”
“Hello.”
My voice was hoarse and it felt like a lump was in my throat. I could almost hear Zaien say the words before the copy spoke them.
“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”
I walked to him and lifted his hand to my cheek. He replied by caressing it softly. The tears that burned in my eyes fell then.
“Zaien…”
He opened his mouth to speak and I slammed the image away. He disappeared as if the wind sliced through every inch of him.
“I have to go,” I said softly, looking at Rho.
“There are others,” she said neutrally. “The names written on your hand. They will come to find you as I have. You are one of us, Claire.”
“I have something I need to do. If I don’t do it, then I will never be able to move on.”
Rho smiled and I turned and ran towards the house.

“You’re what?!” Celti screeched as I grabbed some food and shoved it into a make-shift backpack. “Please tell me you aren’t serious!!”
“Completely,” I said calmly, throwing the back-pack over my shoulder. “I have to get them out of there.”
“But going back is a suicide attempt!” she cried out. “Jate and Feiral will kill you.”
“They can’t kill me if they can’t catch me.”
I turned and started walking out the door and Celti caught my arm, her eyes pleading.
“Please, Claire. Don’t go back there.”
I tugged my arm out of her hold and smiled. It only deepened her frown.
“Trust me,” I said softly. “I’ll be fine. Pes and Jamie and everyone else will protect me. I’ll be fine.”
She gave me a hurt expression and I walked away—away from her and away from the safe, happy life I could’ve had with her.
There were more important things I had to do.
“You sure you’re doing the right thing?”
I met Kine’s cool gaze and knew immediately that he knew everything—about me, about the Clinic, and about Zaien. Something just told me that he knew.
“I have to do this,” I said, walking out the door before he could stop me. Once I cleared it I broke into a dead run, leaving that safe place behind me. “There’s nothing else more important right now.”
The house was surrounded by trees, trees, and more trees. It was almost as if we were on our own little island. It wasn’t long before I had to slow to a walk because my lungs couldn’t take the exertion.
“Claire.”
“Rho, don’t try to stop me.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could think to stop them and I knew without looking that it was Rho. I was answered by her musical laugh.
“Who said anything about stopping you?” she said, appearing at my side. “But, you’re not going to be able to walk to where you’re going. And you need training if you’re going to go against the Time siblings.”
“I know that. I’m not that forgone. Jate and Feiral are a thousand times stronger than I am—especially if they’re vampires. But I have the Patients at the Clinic for help.”
“But will you be able to fight Zaien or Byren?”
I stopped dead in my tracks and met her cat eyes evenly. There was a teasing light in them but I could easily see the undertone of seriousness lying just beneath the surface.
“I can handle Byren,” I said calmly.
And it wasn’t a lie. I could handle Byren in a fight. There were some things I wanted to ask him and, if for some reason, he was siding with Jate and Feiral then I would have to fight him.
Somehow his standing by as the Reapers came after me made things a lot easier.
“But what about Zaien?” she asked evenly. “If you have to fight him, would you be able to?”
I opened my mouth to speak but I couldn’t get the words to form or even the sound to speak.
“Don’t try to lie—you’ll only end up with a headache from lack of oxygen.”
“I can’t.”
The words were easy to say and they helped relieve the headache that had started to form. The look in Rho’s eyes told me that she’d already suspected as much.
“You love him.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I do.”
“There you two are! Do you know how hard it is to find two people when they keep jumping around?!”
I locked gazes with liquid red eyes.
“Zeta, how nice of you to finally join us,” Rho said, addressing the girl. “Are the others on their way?”
The girl nodded and crossed her arms.
“Last time I saw Epsilon he was in India. Apparently there’s a new mage there with some B.A. power so he decided to check it out. I haven’t bumped into anyone else.”
While the two discussed things I took the time to look over the girl.
She couldn’t be more than two years older than me—nineteen at most. Her skin was a smooth, pale ivory that stretched elegantly across a lean dancer’s body.
Her eyes were the color of blood and just as liquid as its color. Her hair fell to about mid-back and was a long, wavy sheet of mahogany.
She was about five-ten and dressed in tight, dark blue pants and a loose white t-shirt with a deep V-cut but she wore a tighter, thin strapped shirt beneath it. The shoes she had on her feet looked painful but boosted her height about five or six inches.
“So this is her?”
My attention snapped back to Rho and Zeta.
“Yes,” Rho replied, pulling me forward. She turned my hands to show my palms. “She might be her daughter.”
The shock in Zeta’s red eyes was evident and I bit the inside of my lip in an attempt to stave off nervousness.
“But hadn’t they decided that her daughter had died with her?”
“You know that those were only theories,” Rho replied coolly. “And how else would you like to explain that she had every member of the Council bled into her palm?”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but who exactly are you?”
My voice didn’t even sound like my own but something about it made both Rho and Zeta’s gaze jerk to me.
“I forgot,” she said with a sigh. “How incredibly rude of me. My name is Zeta, as you’ve probably already guessed. I’m over the island domain—the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia. I’m from Indonesia myself.”
I nodded and looked between the two of them. Somehow it was as if all of their attention was focused on me yet neither of them had their gazes even in my direction.
“Can we go? I really need to go back to the Clinic before something really bad happens.”
“Are you trained?”
This time the voice was male and came from neither of them.
“Epsilon!!”
Zeta ran and threw her arms around the male who returned the hug with an arm around her waist.
“I am Epsilon,” he said calmly. “I hail from the United Kingdom. We’ve not met, Claire. I live in Ireland but hold domain of the United Kingdom and to the ends of Rho’s lands while reaching to Italy.”
“Raze.”
My mind blanked completely of everything but that name. It was as if my fight-or-flight instinct had kicked in and was telling me to get away as fast as I could.
This man looked exactly like Raze.
“You’ve met my twin, I see.”
I blinked.
Twin? Raze was his twin? Was that even possible? Raze was a Reaper. Wasn’t that the equivalent of dead? And how could he be a Reaper if Epsilon was a mage?
“Well, that’s three of us, now,” Rho said with a sigh, crossing her arms. “There are only two more. Do you know where they might be?”
Epsilon shook his head and then met my gaze. Those familiar eyes forced me to suppress a shiver before he spoke.
“Claire. You’re planning to go back to the Clinic, correct?”
I nodded my head.
“It’s not wise,” he said thinly. “With the Time twins there going back alone isn’t quite an option just yet. Even though you may have the Patients, none of them have come into their birth powers.”
“Byren and Zaien aren’t going to be dealt with easily either,” Zeta said, looking over her shoulder at me. “And you’ll have to fight them. At least Byren, anyway. He’s with the Time twins.”
“How do you know this?”
The question was out of my mouth before the thought could even form in my mind. I guessed that it was a mage thing.
“I can see the future,” Rho said calmly. “And, since the Council is linked, when something happens to one of us, depending on what it is, it may be passed along to the others.”
“Like your premonitions,” I finished.
“Bravo, it seems as if you’ve found three of the five. I knew you would be doing just perfect Claire.”
I jerked my gaze towards the voice and the name was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“Byren—”
Byren stood with Kren a few feet away from us. He was dressed in what I guessed were what was called ‘jeans’ as well as ‘sneakers’ and a tight fitting shirt with a blood-colored pentagram printed on the front.
Kren flanked him, poised to attack at any moment. He wore a similar ensemble, save the design on his white shirt was of a dragon.
“Why?” I heard myself say. “Kren, why did you do this? Why are you with Jate and Feiral?”
Kren straightened and turned his head away from me—from the mages. Something about him seemed almost…sad.
“What about Fate?”
His hands fisted and he squeezed his eyes shut.
I took a step forward, reaching towards him, and Rho caught my wrist, holding me in place. When I met her gaze she shook her head sadly.
“I did this to save her,” he said finally. “To keep her safe. Jate and Feiral saved me from the Reapers when I wouldn’t willingly go into the Rift. The Reapers said I was stronger than most.”
“And Jate and Feiral took advantage of that.”
He nodded before continuing.
“They promised me that they would protect Fate when she turned sixteen. They promised me I could take her and we could run away together—we could be safe together.”
“Enough,” Byren growled. “Come with us, Claire. We have unfinished business.”
“No.”
Byren’s green-brown eyes darkened and he took a step towards me. Something about him was completely different and I backed away.
“Why did you side with them?” I asked weakly. “Why did you not try to protect me? Why did you help them? I thought you hated them…”
“Why?” he said coldly, his voice mocking. “Why?! Well, we all have secrets, Claire. Even your beloved Zaien.”
“Leave Zaien out of this!!” I cried out before I could stop myself. “He has nothing to do with this!!”
Byren laughed coldly and started walking closer to me. The mages all held onto me as if they would run in a second to get me away from him.
But I didn’t need protecting. This was Byren. This was the boy I’d grown up with. This was the boy who was my best friend. This was the boy I loved. This was the boy I trusted with my life.
Then why was every inch of me screaming to run away from him as fast as I could?
“He has everything to do with this!! It’s his fault for all of this!! If it wasn’t for him I—”
Byren broke off and glared before continuing.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said coldly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. Claire it’s time to go—I’m taking you back to the Clinic.”
“No.” My voice sounded feeble, even to me.
“She’s one of us,” Rho said coolly. “She is under our protection and we won’t let her go with you.”
Without any warning Rho, Zeta, and Epsilon were jerked away from me and crashed against trees.
“Come with me Claire or I’ll kill them.”
I panicked, my gaze flitting between the three mages and Byren.
“Don’t hurt them,” I said quickly. “I’ll go with you—we both know I was already trying to get to the Clinic.”
“Cla…ire…no…” Rho’s voice sounded weak and only made the decision easier.
In the next moment, Byren was standing in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him move. His hand was brushing against my cheek, pushing away a few strands of hair that had fallen in my eyes.
“Let me tell you a little secret,” he said softly, leaning in so his lips were right beside my neck. “Jate and Feiral are my parents.”
And then everything blacked.