ROGUE ANGEL - Book One: The Beginning

Chapter Three

THANKFULLY, MY room was up to my expectations. It had a king-sized bed, a cupboard, a small TV on a wooden table, and the bathroom was stocked with basic toiletries. On top of all this,it was clean. 

After switching on the air-conditioner – the night was just as warm as the day – all I wanted next was to have silence and cold running water. With that thought, I undressed. That was when I saw them. Holes, bullet holes, at the back of my jacket and T-shirt. I counted them: three holes slightly bigger than a five-cent coin. Oh, no, did I get shot back at the woods? How come I didn’t feel any pain? Furthermore, there was no blood on my T-shirt. To make doubly sure, I dashed to the bathroom mirror and checked my back. My skin was unblemished; no marks, no holes, nothing. In fact it was as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

Weird.

As the icy water came pouring out of the shower head onto me, a tingling sensation ran all over, from head to foot. For a while, I stood upright,placing my outstretched hands on the red-tiled wall and letting the cold shower numb me. I needed that; it felt wonderful. Hopefully it would help me to remember. But no, nothing at all.

Truly frustrating. Maddening even.   

Glaring furiously at the ceiling light as if it were the Divine Being himself, I shouted, “Damn you, God, I want answers to my present dilemma and you’re not helping! Why are you doing this to me, huh?”  

There was no reply from Him. But of course. Who did I think I was;Moses? Yet I kept staring at the light. Wait a second ... the light … there was something about that bright white light which was shaking a memory loose.

I remembered now. It was me who lured the two Indian men to the woods. I suspected that I was being followed when from my bike’s wing mirror, I noticed a white Toyota car trailing me ever since I entered the Perak side of the highway. To confirm my hunch, I stopped at a McDonald’s outlet to have a cup of coffee. Half an hour later when I resumed my journey the white car was nowhere to be seen at first, but a few kilometers down the road, it appeared at my back again. At last I was dead certain that they were on my tail.

As soon as I saw a lay-by, I parked my bike there and ran towards the woods.Like a flock of sheep, the two men, guns in their hands, followed not far behind. After some distance I teased them to fire at me; somehow I knew I was impervious to bullets. They did. Three shots. I fell and played possum.Thinking they had hit the bull’s eye, they approached me and crouched, keeping their guns pointed at my head.

“Is she dead, Samy?” asked the first man in a strong Indian accent.

“She should be, we fired point-blank at her,” answered Samy. “Maybe I ought to feel her pulse just to be sure.”     

“Yeah, you do that. You never know with her kind.”

But Samy never got the chance to do that. To their utter shock, I jumped at them and wreathed their heads with my hands, breaking their necks. Not only was I invulnerable, I was fast and super-strong as well. A shrill cry pierced the silence of the woods. The next instant, the two men dropped to the floor,dead. However, that was not the end of it. For some unexplained reason, rage was erupting in me; I was like an uncontrollable wild beast. I wanted to tear them apart with my bare hands and I would have done so if not for a sudden flash of blinding light appearing before me. Stunned, I staggered backwards,covering my eyes with my hand. Then a female voice spoke. It seemed to becoming from the light itself.

“Don’t let your wrath get in the way of your task, Alison,” she said,her soothing tone calming me. But she sounded weak like she was very far away.“And remember, during your most desperate moment, trust no other but the mirror.”     

I squinted at the dazzling light and managed to see an image of a woman from her neck up. Her hair was white and long-flowing; her blue eyes were framed by pencil-thin velvet black eyebrows; and her glossy, wrinkle-free face suggested she was in her early thirties. Before I could figure out who she was,I felt her hand touching my head. The next thing I knew everything went dark. 

 That was all I could recall.

I groaned in dismay. Instead of bringing some order to the confusion swirling inside me, my fragmentary memory posed more questions. I mean, how did I possess such greatly enhanced abilities? And why did the first man utter her kind? He spoke as though I was not …human. What was I really? Last but not least I still had no idea who the white-haired lady was or what she was babbling about; mirror? What mirror?  

With shower gel all over my body and high-pressurized water drenching me to the bone, I squatted on the wet floor contemplating my next move.

I breathed deeply and slowly. Seconds slipped by.   

Ng Chan Villa … all the answers can be found in Ng Chan Villa. It was more of a feeling than a thought. Like the mansion had a connection with me. I couldn’t explain the rationale behind it.But who cares? All I wanted was answers.  

Then I felt something else. Something so dreadful that it sent chills down my spine. It was a feeling of death, my death … the mansion was also the place where I would die!

But how? Why?

I couldn’t explain that either.