Clan Fighters by Kaitlyn Garlets (dark academia books to read .txt) 📖

saw a small hole inside of the wall, revealing a rolled up picture. She pulled it out with her two fingers that she could fit in it and unrolled it to see a woman and a man that looked just like her and Brian, but older.
The woman was standing behind the man who was sitting in a tall chair and she had her hands on his shoulders, both of them smiling.
They both wore something that looked like something royal people, Reece remembering how her brother said that they were both royal and she was a Princess and he was a Prince. But that totally seemed strange to Reece considering everything that happened. But maybe Brian was right about them being royal because he said that their parents were the leaders of all the Clans.
Reece sighed and looked at the picture again, seeing that she had gotten her father's nose and her mother's eyes.
That made her smile in spite of herself and she knew that she would find them, even if she had to kill more Skincrawlers to get to them.
Reece didn't know that Griffen was standing in the door way until he coughed on purpose and Reece looked up.
"I, uh, heard you talking to someone," Griffen said.
"Yeah, I was talking to Brian. He showed me a picture of our real parents."
"May I look at it?" Griffen asked, stepping into the room.
"Sure," Reece said, and handed him the photo.
"Wow, you look just like them. I can see that you have your father's nose and your mother's eyes," Griffen replied.
"That's what I was thinking too. Now that I think about it, my fake parents didn't look anything like me or Brian, and when I was younger, I always thought that we looked like twins me and mom I mean."
"Huh, well I haven't met your fake parents, but I saw some pictures in the living room of them and you, and I could see that you didn't look like them," Griffen said.
"Yeah, I was silly back then."
"Why would you think that?" Griffen asked, handing the photo back to her.
"Because, I should have realized that I had powers that no one else had and I should have done something to help my brother and I didn't," Reece said, feeling guilty.
"It wasn't your fault. Your brother had decided to not tell you and that was his fault for not telling you. If he would have told you sooner, then you could have done something for yourself. But he decided to not tell you, and now he knows that your paying for it."
"Yeah, I know. I don't want to have to pay for it, but your right. If he would have told me earlier, then maybe I could have trained myself our something that could have helped us, and he wouldn't be dead right now," Reece whispered.
"Why don't we go see if we can find those people that can help us?" Griffen asked, changing the subject.
"Sure," Reece said, turning to the window, looking at the sun as it rose in the sky.
"You know, I just need to say one thing to you."
Reece turned back to Griffen. "What would that be?"
"Everything will turn out just fine."
"But how do you know that?" Reece asked, clutching her real parents photo in her hand.
"I don't, but I'm going to make sure that everything is going to be all right, no matter how far we have to go to find out what you are and what you have to do and all that kinds of things. Okay?" Griffen said, bringing her into a hug.
"Is Griffen really your name?" Reece asked out of the blue.
"I don't know what my real name is. One day, someone asked me what my name was and I said Griffen and it stuck ever since. My parents didn't really name me."
"How do you know that they didn't name you?" Reece asked.
"I don't. but you would think that since they hid me, they would at least leave something to tell me what my real name is. But they didn't, so that's okay with me, because I like my name. It makes me sound tough," Griffen said, laughing.
Reece smiled, feeling his chest rise up and down.
"Can we just be honest with each other from now on? I mean, you totally could have told me that you didn't have a real name instead of saying that Griffen was your real name. I think that if we are going to be friends, we should tell each other everything no matter how much it might hurt us. As long as its true. How does that sound?" Reece asked.
Reece has never had a friend like Griffen. In fact, the only person close enough to be called a friend was Monika, but she was just someone to talk to and tell her to get back to work. Reece was always a girl who wanted to be left alone because no one wanted to talk to her because everyone told her that she didn't fit in with them.
"I guess I was never a person to fit in with anyone," Reece said, not knowing she said it out loud.
"Huh?" Griffen asked, confused.
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking."
"I agree with you about that."
"You do?" Reece asked, lifting her head from his chest.
"Yeah, and to start our new lie-free friendship off, I want to ask you something."
"Okay, shoot."
"Do you like me?" He asked, letting her go so that he could look at her.
"Of course I do," Reece said.
"No, I mean, do you like me more than a friend?"
"Honestly?"
"Yes. Honestly."
"I like you as a friend, and I never really thought about liking you more than a friend, but..." Reece trailed off.
"Yeah, I get it. You need time to think about it. And plus, we did just meet like two days ago, right?" Griffen replied, knowing that she might like him, but she needed more time to think things through.
"Yeah, exactly. I'm just not sure about anything right now. Do you like me? I mean more than a friend?" Reece asked. Griffen looked at her and didn't say anything for a minute. Was right now a good time to tell her that he did like her, even if they just met two days ago?
"Uh, well...I...well..." Griffen stuttered, not sure how to tell her.
"Come on, now, you promised to tell me everything! I already know, just tell me!" Reece said, lightly punching his shoulder.
"You know?" Griffen asked, feeling his cheeks getting hot.
"Yes, I do know," Reece said, shaking her head, rolling her eyes at him.
"Okay, I do like you, but I don't want you to take it the wrong way, okay?" Griffen said, taking a step back to get a full view of Reece's expression.
Reece hid her expression well, because Griffen couldn't get anything out of it. "Well?"
"Well what?" Griffen asked.
"Are we going, or what?" she asked, wanting to leave before this conversation got too far out of hand.
"Oh, right, sorry," Griffen said.
Reece moved past Griffen, grabbing her stomach, which still hurt from Griffen punching her over and over to get the Skincrawler out.
"Is your stomach okay?" Griffen asked, turning to Reece, who was walking out her bedroom door.
"No, it still hurts. But that's okay. I would rather have it hurt really badly then have a creepy Skincrawler in me. It sounds too gross, huh?" Reece asked, stepping over the blood stain in the hallway as Griffen followed her downstairs.
"Yeah, it does," Griffen said, almost tripping over Reece who had stopped to look at a picture of her and her brother with their arms around each other at a beach, the wind in their faces.
"I remember that day. It was my birthday and I turned twelve years old. My mom and dad didn't know what they wanted to do for me, so they asked me, and I told them that I wanted to go to a beach in California, so we went and stayed for a whole week. We weren't going to stay that long, but my parents liked it so much, we ended up staying in a hotel for a week."
"I bet you had a lot of fun, right?" Griffen asked, looking at a twelve year old Reece, who had hair so short, it looked like a by cut.
Reece saw Griffen's expression when he looked at her hair and laughed. "I used to think that I was going to be a hair stylist, so I decided to cut my own hair and it turned out terrible, so my dad took me to a salon and had them fix it before I went to school that same day. Dad had a thing about appearances for some reason."
"That must have been bad for you."
"Not really, I really liked having short hair because my hair was always in my face. It used to be past my knees before I cut it," Reece said, surprising Griffen.
"That actually is really funny when you think about it," Griffen said, trying not to laugh.
"Its okay, you can laugh. My whole family laughed when they saw what I did to my hair. Brian was laughing the hardest. He was on the floor holding his gut and he had tears streaming down his face when he saw my hair," Reece said, smiling despite herself.
Griffen let himself laugh until he got tired of laughing.
"So, where are we going?" Reece asked once she thought Griffen was fine.
"I thought that we were going to go and try to talk to Monika or whatever her name is," Griffen said.
"That's right. But I meant right after that. How are you going to find those people that can help us?" Reece asked. "Do you have a public library here in this town?" Griffen asked.
"Yeah, why?" Reece asked, confused.
"I can find him if I can get to a library."
"The library doesn't open till one o' clock," Reece replied, moving from the stairs to the kitchen.
"Oh, well, I need to get to a library," his mood lowering.
"Well, your going to have to wait till one o' clock. I can show you the town while we are waiting, if you want me to."
"Sure. I don't know this town very well like I do with most of the other towns that I went to before I came here."
"Odd," Reece said to herself so low that Griffen didn't hear her.
Reece took a look around her house, knowing that this probably would be the last time that she ever saw it again.
"Do you think that I will ever be the same again?" Reece asked Griffen, picking up a picture of her and her parents at a museum.
"I can tell you that you won't be the same, and I don't think that anything is going back to the way it was."
Reece sighed dramatically. "I figured that you were going to say that. Lets go and talk to Monika if we are going to then."
"Okay," Griffen said and walked to the front door, opening it to see Monika standing outside. "Oh, we were just going to come and talk to you."
Reece looked up from the picture that she was looking at and saw Monika standing in the doorway.
"Monika!" Reece said, shocked.
"Can we talk?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest.
"Okay...how about at your house?" She asked, grabbing Griffen's arm and pulled him out the door before Monika could say anything.
"I know what you did to me. I know that you were at my house earlier yesterday and I know you somehow forced me to give you