Smudge

Smudge

By: CelticKnot

Summary:
19 year old Tami always thought her life was filled with her paranormal class, her cats and finding her Druidic history...but now.... An image has caught her eye and she decided to draw it on herself, wondering if it would be a good tattoo. She tried to wash it off after the marker she used started to irritate her skin. It left a smudge and it won’t come off. Now, day after day, the image returns and she can’t wash it off, no matter what she uses. An ancient battle has been resurrected and now a demon and an angel have arrived to give her a choice…Help end the war or let everything she knows be destroyed.


:::Chapter One:::

When Tami first started the Paranormal Studies class at the community college, she thought it’d be about spirits, demons, and the like. She at least wanted to meet other empaths. But what was the class about? Horned things that went bump in the night, and the Apocalypse. Lucky her. Yeah, sure, she could always drop out, but then she wouldn’t have access to the high-tech computers with amazing internet speed, and archives of all the books they had on the different spirits and her Druid ancestry.

Steven Burthrope, know-it-all pompous ass who thought he could get any girl he wanted, was currently trying to show some other piece of un-important information about some black cloaked “demon” that sucked out your soul while you slept.
“See, and then while you’re stuck in a nightmare –like coma, it sucks out your soul, through it’s mouth of course, and then you die.” He said matter-of-factly.
“This is Harry Potter bullshit, Steven.” Tami said as she flipped through another Druid ancestry one foot thick book, dusty and worn with age. Everything was written in Gaelic, and she was currently trying to translate a passage.

“Bullshit, Tamitha? I think not! This is important! What would happen if one of these things attacked you? What you didn’t let me look around your apartment to make sure there wasn’t one of these things hiding in your closet?” Steven said, his pale, blotchy face growing red, his little black eyes glittering as he thought of going to Tamitha’s apartment, just once.
“Steven…I’m busy and it’s Tami, not Tamitha. Shoo, fly.” She waved her purple polished hand, dismissing him. She watched him storm off, and Alyssa Romani followed him, shooting a glare behind her back, her blonde hair swinging, the brown roots visible underneath the headband she wore.
Tami looked back at the page and reread the same sentence for the fiftieth time. Her mouth danced silently as she looked over the sentence again. She sighed and flipped the page. Her eyes widened slightly as her eyes fell upon a symbol. It was a pentagram with a dragon wrapping it’s long body in and out of the points. There was a small symbol in the middle, similar to the orichalcos on Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Tami traced the dragon with her finger, somehow enthralled by the beautiful symbol. She put a piece of tracing paper over the symbol and gently traced it, every detail. She was working on the scales of the dragon when someone tapped her shoulder.
She let out a yelp and jumped, her hand flying to her breast above her racing heart. Tabitha Jenkins smiled at her, her glasses hiding her pale blue eyes.
“Tam, it’s 8. You’ve been drawing for the last two hours, sweets.” She said quietly, her soft voice helping calm Tami’s racing heart.
Tami blinked and rubbed her dry eyes and stretched, her back protesting and retaliating with a sharp stab right in the small of her back. She winced and stood up, her legs shaking.
“Ugh.” She muttered. She felt dizzy and wanted to go to bed.
“You ok, sweetie?” Tabitha’s mother mode kicked in, as always when Tami didn’t look too good. Tabitha had a 3 year old daughter and a 17 year old son back at home. Tabitha kept her eye on the younger members of the club and Tami was like a daughter to her.

“Yeah, I’m never to going to do that again. My body hates me.” Tami said while putting her things away in her bag.

“You think Steven will freak out if I borrow this?” She said while pointing to the book the symbol was in.
“Do it, sweets, I love when he goes berserk and I can act like his mother.” Tabitha said with laughter in her voice.

“Ok then, I’m going to go home, viciously cuddle with me kittens and sleep…possibly for three days.” Tami said as she walked out the door and down the hallway to the door outside.


The cold night assaulted her, the sky letting out little tears, covering the town of Elven in a beautiful mist. The light wind whipped at her brown and gold hair, her emerald orbs, searching up and down the streets for any taxis. She sighed and walked through the grass to the left, her black ankle-high combat boots sinking slightly into the small greedy mounds of mud. The mist played with her waist length hair, and clung to her purple ankle length dress and same length trench coat. She hugged the leather coat closer to her as the wind tried to slip in and freeze her pale skin.

The trees were whispering as the mist fell upon them and the little drops told whoever was listening their secrets. Tami could hear it all. The cicadas sung their lullaby in their higher homes in the trees, and the crickets chirped a low, happy song in the grass as Tami walked by. It seemed all of nature was happy for the weather today. Especially her.

The small gas-lit lamps shone up and down the old street, Tami grateful to the city council for not turning these old lamps into electric ones.

Tami walked up the cracked, weather worn steps to her apartment building. She unlocked and opened the door and walked up to the mail boxes, and took her mail, and walked up the two flights to her apartment.
Her good mood was killed when she found Steven Burthrope standing near her cheerful “Welcome Fey” doormat. He was standing with his hands on his jean clad hips, his stomach jutting out under his yellow vest. He looked pissed, and the tapping of his foot on the wooden floor board was loud in the empty hallway.
Tami groaned and sagged against the wall ten feet away from Steven.

“God damn it, Steven, just go away. I’m tired, I’m sore, I’m not in the mood for your crap right now.” She said as she pushed away from the wall, the Druid book heavy in her bag.

“You have been avoiding me too long, Tamitha, and now, today is the day we go out!” Steven announced, a smirk on his face.

“Ohmigod.” she muttered, and pushed him into the wall and unlocked her door. She swung the door shut behind her and heard Steven walk in.

“Wow….this is the dump you live in?” Steven looked around the living room/dining room. Tami dropped her keys on the counter and set her bag on the counter.

“Get out, Steven.” She said as she dug a soda out of the fridge.
“I’m just checking out the sad place where my girlfriend lives.” He said as he poked a can of cat food.
“Steven….just go away….seriously.” Tami said as she sipped her Coke and started searching for her house phone. The cops would throw him out, she was too wiped to do it herself.

“Ugh…I hate cats. Disgusting creatures. Always acting like they’re so superior. And they mess up the furniture, and oh yuck, here it comes!” Steven grimaced as Tami’s youngest kitten, Oreo, jumped up from the plush chair next to the counter onto the surface to see his mama.

“Hello, my little Oreo baby!” Tami said and scooped up the kitten in her arms. The kitten closed his eyes and purred loudly.

“Awwwwwwws, I missed you, too, my little kitty baby. Oooooh, I love you, yes I do.” She said as she hugged the little purring black and white mass of fur and cuteness. She gave Oreo a kiss on the head and set him on the counter, where he started to play with a toy mouse that was laying on its side.

“Ugh! How can you touch something so disgusting!” Steven exclaimed from the corner, staring at Oreo as if he were a pile of puke. The kitten ignored him and continued to attack the mouse viciously.

As if on cue, Tami’s other kitten, Dragon, came running from the master bedroom and into the kitchen, meowing in welcome.
The little calico kitten wiggled her little butt, and jumped 3 feet up onto the counter from the floor. She walked over to Tami and bumped heads with her.

“Hello, my little Dragon. How are yous todays?” Tami asked, stroking the kitten under her chin. Oreo walked over, leaving the mouse on its back, defeated. Oreo and Dragon purred and sat down, their tails doing little slow flicks as they watched Steven, who continued to look at the kittens in disgust.

“I gotta go find your foods, babies, I’ll be right back.” Tami said, completely ignoring Steven and still looking for the phone. She found the unopened bag of food and the phone under her desk chair in her room. She was walking out into the kitchen just in time to see Steven picking up Oreo and Dragon by the extra skin on their backs by his index finger and thumb. Both kittens were squirming around and Steven was walking towards the window with a triumphant smirk on his ugly face.

“Steven, if you don’t put down my kittens now, I will personally cut off your shriveled balls, than your dick, and then shove your dick up your ass and your balls down your throat and I’ll drop kick you from the roof top myself.” Tami grated out as she stormed towards him, the phone and cat food left and forgotten on the floor where she had dropped them.

“Oh, darling, you’re going to have to learn that relationships mean sacrifices, and yours start with these things.” He said, as if explaining something simple to a child and continued towards the window.

“Ok, that’s it.” Tami grabbed the table lamp and smashed it over his head, and watched him crumble to the ground, the kittens dropping to all fours and then running towards the bedroom, and running under Tami’s bed.
Tami retrieved the phone and called the police, telling them what had happened.

***
One hour later, Tami was Steven free, and the wonderful cops had agreed that what she did was to save her beloved pets from a grisly death, so Steven would spend the night in the hospital, and then all day tomorrow in jail.

She sighed and stretched, her back still aching. She wasn’t tired anymore, Steven had pissed her off, especially when he thought it would be perfectly fine to kill her kittens, her babies.

She grabbed both of the little rascals as they ran past her and walked into her bedroom and dropped them on the bed. They immediately ran up to the big oblong pillow and curled up together and started purring. Tami threw off her dress and took off her boots and caught sight of herself in the mirror. D sized breasts, a small stomach, not skinny but not fat either. Just a little bump that came with her Portugese heritage. She stuck her tongue out at her thighs and crawled into bed, in just her comfortable little skull bra and black bikini panties.
She yawned and hugged her kitty babies and fell asleep, hoping tomorrow would be better, and the rain would still be there to whisper to her in the morning.
She fell asleep to the soft pitter patter of raindrops dancing on her window and the content purring of Oreo and Dragon.

***

He watched her from the rooftop of the building across the street. Her golden brown hair was splayed across the pillow, her chest raised and fell in a pattern, and her two kittens were sprawl haphazardly across the weird pillow she loved so much. He had finally been released, and now the millennia long battle would all come down to her…a beautiful woman unaware of her gifts, or that someone was watching her. His red eyes darted to the left as he heard whisper soft movement, and met with ice blue eyes.

“Hello Xavier.” He said to the angel sitting a few feet from him, his voice rough and deep.
“Long time, no see Damien.” The angel, Xavier, replied, his voice melodic and soft.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Xavier asked, a white gloved hand burying itself in his white blonde hair.
“Yep. Kinda sucks, doesn’t it?” Damien said, sitting back, his waist length black hair swaying as he found a new position to sit in.
“And why is that?” Xavier said, almost snapped, his shoulder length hair whipping in the wind.
Damien stuck his tongue out, careful not to knick it on his fangs.
“You’re not serious….why is it that I always have to get stuck working with you? You always want to seduce the chosen one and never listen to reason!” Xavier yelled, his white feathered wings flapping around, causing Damien to get soaked.

“Thanks, X, I just love rain water all over my wings. You got feathers, I got leathery shit.” He mumbled, his black gloved hand brushing away the water on his trench coat.

The two almost looked alike, the irony.

Damien, the demon, wore an ankle length black trench coat with special cuts in the back for his wings, black cargo jeans that hugged his hips, and a black muscle t-shirt, black wrist length gloves with a red orichalcos on each glove on the back of the hand, and black, heavy combat boots, and his black leathery wings had a spike at the tip of each wing.

Xavier, on the other hand, wore a white waist length white trench coat that was out-lined in a blue trim, cuts bug enough to accommodate his wings. His white wrist length gloves had blue fingers and a little blue orichalcos on the back of the hands, a white suit shirt underneath the trench coat and white cargo pants that also had a blue trim and wore white square toe ankle boots.
Both considered enemies, yet old friends, both determined to end the war that had raged on for a millennia.

“She never should have touched that symbol.” Damien whispered, leaning back against the industry sized air conditioner.
“Tami Anita Winters….the Chosen One…” Xavier said, joining Damien.
“You know we have to protect her.” Damien stated.
“Yeah, let’s just drop in tomorrow. I can see it now. ‘Hi, I’m Xavier, an angel, and this is Damien, a demon, you are the Chosen One and you have to help us end a millennia long war’..How’s that sound?” Xavier said as he looked over at Damien, a hopeful look on his face.
Damien started laughing and was joined by Xavier.
“We’ll figure it out tomorrow, old friend. For now, lets sleep. That stupid flight has knocked me out.”
“If she writes that symbol on her body anywhere, and it doesn’t come off, that’ll prove it, right?”

Silence.

“Damien, I asked you a question , you dick.” Playful anger was in Xavier’s voice.
“Yeah…but if she doesn’t even write it on herself, then the elders were wrong.” Damien’s sleepy voice met Xavier’s ears.
“Pfft, fat chance of that happening. But we’ll have to wait and see. We don’t want another London incident.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Well, what if-“
“Xavier.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the hell up and go to sleep, you prick.”
Laughter sounded out into the sleepy, rain filled night.

****

So, what do you think? I’ve been wanting to write this story for awhile and after I catch up on some sleep, I’m going to write the next chapter :3
PLEASE review, so I know if it’s good or not. Remember, more reviews, quicker chapters.
^-^

Also, most of the warnings will come later in the story ^-^