8 Silent Prison

Alissa screamed as her bones crushed and her veins filled with lava. Her throat was hoarse from the violent vibrating of her vocal chords as she continued to thrash and kick at nothing. There was nothing to fight as it was her body fighting itself. She felt her skin being ripped apart. Every time something broke, tore, and bled she felt it seal itself up and the healing process was a never ending sting and burning that felt live salt on burnt broken flesh. It felt like she had been enduring the torture for years! She scratched and ripped at her skin wanting to escape from the nerves causing the pain. Everytime she ripped, she felt knives stick into her as it healed itself again.

She lied in a pool of blood so thick she choked on the smell and feeling of it. Just when she started to feel the smallest lessening of pain she felt cold heat as her body erupted in flames. Still it continued to fight to regenerate itself. She continued trying to scream but her throat was so raw and swollen she couldn't even breathe. She clawed at her neck trying to open it as she struggled to catch the slightest breeze of air into her lungs. The she felt the knives inside her as her throat healed itself. Only to have the same thing happen again.

This agony continued over and over, never relenting. Never hesitating. Never killing her to release her. She screamed and screamed at nothing because no one was there. Just her, the darkness, and the cold fire. She was trapped a prison, silent except her screams.

Elijah watched as Alissa continued to sleep. Though it wasn't sleep. She was unconscious. She had fallen into this after the incident with Layla the night before. It was now midday and she hadn't even stirred. She didn't kick blankets off, toss or turn. She just breathed, unmoving. He couldn't imagine what she was witnessing in the hell she would go through for the rest of the day and he hoped when she woke she wouldn't remember it.

Elijah stayed in the room through the day and slept in the chair at night. He'd leave to make phone calls or pick out a different book to read, but otherwise there he stayed, by her side. Not wanting her to be alone.

His mind drifted back to the day he first saw her as the woman she had become. He sat in a chair in the cramped room with her adoptive parents, sitting in silence in wait for her to enter. He wondered if she would remember him from the summer they spent playing as children. Before the world had turned dark for him. She entered the room wearing what amounted to rags but she somehow made it beautiful. Her eyes held humor with a lilt of surprise while her face had shown no emotion. She studied his face, focusing on his eyes. No one looked in his eyes like that. Not since his mother had left. Not since they only held anger and a need for vengeance.

She walked over with the tea as he father had insisted and held a cup to him. He stared at her willing her to show any amount of remembrance of who he was but her face stayed the same. She didn't remember him and it pissed him off. He let his fury show wanting her to look away but she refused. He could see the defiance in her emerald gaze.

That defiance. He missed it. After she signed the papers it had vanished. She had become a completely different person. Someone who obeyed without a thought of their own. It made him angry but sadness also crept its way in that day. Marrying him had taken everything from her. He wandered if he would do different if he could do it over again and hated that he knew he wouldn't. He needed her for his plans to unravel. Needed her to complete his vengeance. He hated that he had to use her and knew that when she found out, which she would, she would go on despising him for eternity.

He mused over their time in the gardens, running through trees. The sunlight shining down on them as she looked at him with green eyes that held mischief and wonder.

While pondering over their time together, he felt his skin begin to heat up. There was no way he was blushing, especially not on his arms. Then he felt the painful heat of fire. He looked up and she hadn't moved but the room was extremely hot, as though it were an August day on the equator.

He walked over to her, the closer he got the more painful the heat. He had to calm her down somehow before she erupted the room in flames.

Grasping at any idea he could, he grabbed her still body into his arms and sat on the bed with her in his lap. He calmed himself by thinking of the summer they played, hoping to make his voice soft for her, and he spoke of their adventures as children.

"Do you remember the time when mother read to us from the book of fairy tales as we lay in the grass? We had just eaten all of the fruit we had picked that morning and our bellies were so full we couldn't move." He continued on with the story and felt the room begin to cool down. He kept telling her of their time when the world was light for just a brief moment, unsure of if she could really hear him or not. He felt calmer and less angry than he had been in decades.

Dawn approached and Elijah opened his eyes to see he was still in the same position he was last night. Sitting on the bed with her laying in his lap. She still hadn't moved at all, not even a twitch. He checked her breathing and nearly panicked when he felt no air coming from her nose and her chest wasn't moving rhythmically anymore. Then, he remembered it was part of the process. His heart still broke inside as he continued to tell himself that it would only be for today.

The door to the room opened and he felt his anger bubbling to the surface. He didn't want someone getting hurt by her in cass she woke and burned the room to ashes.

He calmed when he saw familiar empty eyes staring back at him.

"Hazazel, I wasn't expecting you. What are you doing here?"

Irritation and pain choked his voice. He was irritated that there was company in the room with her in this fragile state and in pain knowing she lay there, lifeless.

"She'll need one of her own to tell her what and who she is. I won't know her hidden name until she wakes up and only telling her it will make her remember who she is. Leave us, Elijah."

"I cannot." But Elijah barely was able to finish his sentence when he was jerked out of the room by an unseen force, the door slammed shut behind him.

Alissa woke to her body feeling tired but different. She looked at her hands and could see every individual pore and hair follicle. She heard breathing beside her as a voice she found familiar and settling began to speak.

"Evangelina."

Alissa shot back down on the bed, a light blinding her in a searing pain worse than anything she felt in that horrible silent prison she dreamt. The pain subsided and the light dimmed but only slightly. She saw a woman. Dark brown wavy hair falling past her waist. Emerald green eyes twinkled as she looked down. Her voice, soft as new fallen snow, spoke her name. "Evangelina."

A smile spread across the woman's face. "Know that I will always love you, my angel."

The scene changed and she was being carried by someone else to a small house. She knew that house. It was Edena and Alex's house.

"You will look after her." A voice spoke. "Or you will die."

The scene went dark and she opened her eyes once again.

"Do you remember who you are child?"

"Evangelina. Daughter of Michael, Archangel of the heavens and Angela, the fallen angel of hell."

"That is correct. You are an angel, my dear. Your earthly name is Alissa and you will continue to go by that name. No other person shall know your hidden name. If they do, they will have control over you."

"Who are you?" Alissa asked the old man.

"I am Hazazel. The fallen angel who sat by Lucifer's side in the heavens."

The man grabbed her hand and closed his eyes.

"You have telekinesis, telepathy, fire elemental, regeneration, keen senses, and teleportation."

"How do you know that?" She asked him, curiously.

"I have the power to see through people to tell what they are."

"Why don't I hear your thoughts right now?"

"You have to practice and tune them but do it slowly. Reading peoples minds is not always a blessing. Sometimes you find out information you would rather not know." His hollow eyes somehow looked sad.

"Are you blind, Hazazel?"

"Only in the human sense."

Alissa looked down confused, pondering over what his words meant.

"It means I cannot see the images you see. I see the souls beings have. I see sound waves bouncing off objects. For example, I can see the look on your face but I can't see the color of your eyes. Your soul is bright, blindingly so. But it has bruised patterns on parts of it. You've had a difficult life." He clasped his hands in his lap as he stared intently at her.

"Where are my parents?" Alissa felt anger and rage begin to bubble up in her knowing her parents had left her with such horrible people.

"Angels are not meant to have children. You would have been killed as a child had you stayed with them. As for the torment you were put through, children of angels must be hidden by a shroud. This shroud is one that only a witch can create and maintain. Edena is a witch."

"Why did they agree to take me in?"

"They believed they could receive power from you once you turned of age."

Alissa felt like she was only becoming more confused with each answer to her questions. Her head began to swim and she tried to concentrate on her thoughts but her mind raced, beginning to pick up noises that swam before her eyes.

"When can I see her?" Layla's voice sang quietly, almost at a whisper.

"Soon, I'm sure, dear." Rosita cajoled her daughter.

Alissa could hear them though they were all the way down the stairs.

She tried to return her hearing back to the room she sat in.

"I can see you're struggling with your new abilities. Why don't I leave you for the time being. When you are feeling up to it, I will return." Hazazel rose from his chair slowly.

"Wait. What else can you do?"

"I am a water elemental, I can also read minds though I am retreating from that for the time being as your mind will be so clouded it would be very difficult to make sense of. I have a healing ability. And speed. I can also turn off other angels' abilities for a short time."

"Turn them off? You could turn mine off?"

"With yours being very sporadic and out of control it would take much effort, reducing the time. But for a few minutes, yes."

"Could you.." Alissa but her lip, not sure if she should ask.

"What is it, dear?" Hazazel implored her to reveal what she was thinking.

"I want to talk to Elijah, but you said I am a fire elemental among other things. I don't want to hurt him should I go out of control."

Hazazel chuckled. "Don't worry about the young lord. He will be fine even if you burnt the entire building to the ground."

"How can you be so sure." Alissa bit her nails to the quick.

"Trust me, dear. If you are so curious, ask him yourself."

Hazazel retreated to the door and exited the room.

"Is she alright?" Elijah's dark voice spoke. It sounded just as filled with poisonous rage as it did when she first saw the grown version of him.

"She's fine. And remember she can hear you." Alissa heard footsteps receding and the door opened once again. Elijah cautiously walked in and looked at the woman on the bed.

Alissa's hair was a matted mess on top of her head from two days of sweating, tossing, turning, and not being bathed along with one day of being physically dead. Her nightgown was wrinkled and sagged off one shoulder. But everything else about her was flawless. Her skin was paler now and seemed to glow like fresh snow on a sunny day and there were no blemishes on it. Not even a freckle. Her lips were a pale red tinted with pink on the outer rim of her bottom lip. Her eyes had changed color completely. Going from green shining emeralds, to silvery pearls with black craters in the middle.

But they held a dangerous anger and blazed right around the pupil. Elijah was taken aback as the air around began to sizzle.

"You disappeared for over a damn decade, and then reappeared only to treat me with anger and rage any second you could." Her voice remained calm as she spoke, but the undertone of it made Elijah feel something he hadn't felt since he was a boy. Intense and overwhelming fear.

"Hazazel says I can't kill you and you better hope he's right. As much as I'd hate to hurt you, I'm not sure I can control myself." She gritted her teeth as items in the room began to rise in midair.