Shockwave 4

So the last one was a little cheesy but it is my personal opinion that cheese is good for you in small doses. Anyway, here is more story.


Skulduggery and Valkyrie must have been good enough people to understand that Kia needed some space after they took her father to jail because they didn't come back for the next two days. Or at least that was what Kia thought before finding out what acutally happened. During those two days Kia began to wonder whether she should also practice her magic so that she would not repeat her father's mistake or keep pushing it away as she had been. Which would be the better solution in this case? Kia spent hours getting distracted at school and getting kicked in the face at the gym because she could not stop thinking about it and her father. Just when she had resolved to never think about magic again, Skulduggery and Valkyrie appeared on her doorstep again.
"What do you want?" she asked.
They both stayed silent. That was not a good sign even though Kia had met them only once before it had become very apparent to her that Skulduggery was a man who liked his own voice very much and Valkyrie was not exactly the silent type either.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Your father is dead," Valkyrie said. Her eyes begged her not to freak out. Kia didn't listen.
"You killed him?" she shouted. Skulduggery and Valkyrie stepped past her and Skulduggery shut the door.
"No, we did not. We were on our way to the Sanctuary and we were attacked by vampires."
Kia froze mid thought. She hadn't known what she was going to say but she was sure that it no longer applied.
"Uh...ah...um...vampires?" she asked, not sure whether this was all a bad joke or not and desperately wishing it was.
"Yes, vampires. We were just driving along and we were attacked. It was late last night and vampires, well, they don't really like us so we were attacked and we did your best to defend your dad but there were four of them and that's a lot for us to defend against. Look here we got injuries too and--"
Kia couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Are you insane? There is no way you were attacked by vampires. Vampires don't exist, they aren't real."
Kia was going to keep rambling but she felt something invisible hit her chest and push her up against the wall. She saw Valkyrie with her hand spalyed out in front of her. Skulduggery clicked his fingers and fire appeard in his palm. This wasn't a small flame like the one he had shown  her before. This was a roaring inferno.
"Vampires exist. Magic exists and you, you are now in the middle of it. I made a promise to your father to protect you and then he died because I wasn't able to protect him so now I will do everything in my power to make sure that you are safe and happy. Okay? But to do this I need you to believe that everything that is going on is real," Skulduggery's voice was soft but ragged as if he didn't want to be saying what he was saying. He blinked at her twice and then touched his collar bones so that his face melted off and left just a skull. Kia didn't scream. She was too startled to scream. She was too startled to do anything but stare. The skull watched her intently as if waiting to see what she would do. Kia looked back and then began to breathe. A couple months back, she had gotten into a fight with a street gang. She had seen them trying to take a girl somewhere against her will. Kia didn't want to think about what they might have done to her but seeing the girl squirming against their strong grips and their gleeful sneers had made her really, really angry. Kia had proceeded to beat the guys till they had to be sent to the hospital. Afterwards she had felt so guilty that she said she would give up martial arts  but her teacher told her that she was being stupid.
"If you get angry enough you will find a way to hurt people and maybe next time instead of using you bare hands, you will use a metal pipe or a broken bottle. To help out the people that you think are in danger, that is an honorable way to fight but to lose yourself in the process is not good. I can teach you to calm your mind so that this will not occur again if you want." Her master had taught her various breathing techniques and thinking patterns so that if she got into a situation like that again, she would be able to react calmly.
Now, staring up into the holes where the skeleton's eyes would have been, she used every single technique he taught her. She forced her breathing to come out in long steady gusts, she forced her thoughts to turn to a calm, slow river, and she forced every muscle in her body to relax. These exercises were focused on taking away the emotions that would have forced her to attack or, in this case, scream until she fainted. In a matter of seconds, her fear, anger and sadness of her father's death seemed to be in the background. Kia looked at everything with a toughtful and analitical eye. There was a skeleton staing in front of her. She was being pressed up against the wall by some invisilble force, she had seen fire spring up into the man's hands with a click of his fingers and two days before, she had seen her father's eyes turn black. Not to mention, her own newly developed powers. If all of this existed, vampires could exist and they could have killed her father.  
"Okay, sorry," she said to the skeleton. "I'll believe you."
He touched the marks on his collarbones and the fake face slid back up to cover his bones. He looked relieved that Kia had calmed down but there was something else there. Concern maybe? There was no reason for him to be concerned though. Kia was totally calm.
"What will you teach me?" she asked him still in the totally calm mode.
"I will teach you how to control your powers and about the magical world. I'll make sure that you are safe and protected and that no one around you gets involved."
"Okay," Kia said. She caught the look of confusion that flashed across Valkyrie's features and wondered what about her words had spiked it.
"Well, then okay," Skulduggery said, in the same way you would fill the silence after an awkward coversation. "I'm going to take you to the Sanctuary now."
Kia nodded and followed Skulduggery as he walked out the door. A flash of sadness made its way through the wall of calm she built around her mind and she staggered. Close eyes, deep breath. She was back in control.