Tempestuous

"No one knows." he knew the young girl wouldn't believe him. If anyone was comparable to Tempest in the pranks department, it was Davis and she knew most of his tricks. He lowered his voice as the members of the Stone family did when speaking of any member of the Rose family, "all we know is he ran off with Bianca Rose."

"Who?" she thought Davis said Bianca Rose and she knew there was no way he could have said Bianca Rose. "did you just say-?"

"Bianca Rose." he whispered she looked at him in total disbelief for a split second before she cracked a wide smile

"You're such a bad liar." she slugged him in the arm. He had to be lying- she was young, but she was old enough to know that Stones were never to talk to any member of the Rose family. They had been bitter enemies with the Stone family her whole life.

"I swear I'm not lying, pest." he used the nickname he and Diago had come up with for her when she was a toddler. Even at such a young age, the name just fit her.

"Bullshit." she shook her head and Dante bent his paper in half to look at her. As usual his parents and her parents were way to busy talking at the other side of the room to watch the bad little girl.

"You and that filthy mouth." he scolded her and she frowned.

"Mind your own damn business." she whispered before she threw her dinner roll at his paper. Davis just grinned watching Dante's reaction. By this point if Tempest wasn't here, Dante would be hollering at Davis for his table manners, forcing him to move out of his line of vision.

No matter how old he was or how much time had passed, Dante still hated being around Davis while they ate. he had to constantly yell at him to stop dropping food all over, to stop talking while eating, to eat with his mouth closed, to not breath so hard as he ate, to move away from him or to stop eating entirely. Davis knew for a fact that Dante read the paper at meals, just to avoid watching his brother eat. Luckily, Tempest was such a distraction, Davis could relax, watch the entertainment she was sure to bring and enjoy his meal with out his brother's control freak ways.

Dante would relent just to save himself further harassment from Tempest- realistically he couldn't do anything about it. If it was one of his brothers they would be fighting, but he couldn't fight Tempest and he couldn't control that mouth of hers. Davis just smiled, he enjoyed seeing Dante between a rock and a hard spot.

"Put it down." Dante barked as Tempest grabbed the roll from Davis's plate.

"Hey." Davis objected, "I'm going to eat that."

"I'll give it back." smiling as she projected it towards Dante's head. He moved out of the way just in time, as the roll whipped past his head and hit the floor. He glared at Tempest then looked over to see that her mischief again went undetected by his or her parents.

"Pest!" Davis began to object again.

"Do you want me to go get it for you?" she smiled at Davis.

"No." he said and pointed to the plate of rolls to her side as she reached over to pass them to him.

"You need your ass beat." Dante said in his deep angry voice and Davis smiled, realizing the roll was worth this. Dante was really pissed.

"That's never going to happen and you know it," she said as she picked a piece of lettuce from her salad and aimed at him; he stared at her, daring her to throw the lettuce.

"If you throw that I will beat you myself." he warned her.

"You wouldn't dare." Tempest boldly defied him and threw the lettuce, hitting Dante directly in the nose. Davis stuffed his last chunk of steak in his mouth to prevent himself from grinning. Dante realized there was nothing he could do and relented. He felt immature for tattling on her, besides neither his nor her parents would do anything about it. In all of their eyes Tempest could do no wrong. They would tell him to handle it, or ignore it- he was the adult after all. Well he tried desperately to ignore her but it didn't work; she wouldn't allow it. He should ignore it, she was only 13, but she was a very smart and cunning thirteen year old, he knew plenty of adults that were not as clever as she.

***

In the car on the way home, Tempest listened to her parents discuss Diago's running away. She doodled in her note book as their words became scrambled and muted to her ears. Her mind was focused on Dante and the BB gun Davis had given her. She wanted to use it against Dante to shoot him in his thigh for being so rude and unsympathetic to her plight. She was however torn because she knew shooting him with a BB gun was childish and immature, and she wasn't sure if she wanted him to see her that way anymore. She was almost 14 now; she didn't want him to think of her as a child, she wanted to show him she had matured.

Suddenly the car jerked to the side and Tempest looked to her left to see a yellow sports car crashing into the driver's side of her parent's car. She watched as her father was slammed between the seat he was buckled into and the front end of the yellow car, and then suddenly both cars were flipping through the air.

Everything seemed to go in slow motion as she sat there mindlessly, buckled into the seat, watching the cars flip and her mother scream; then the cars landed hard, bringing the surreal situation to an abrupt halt. Tempest opened her mouth and screamed as loudly as she possibly could.

"Red" the elite dance club was hosting a private party for Alex the owner's best friend and several people had wandered out to the front doors, drinking and partying in the storm. They were laughing and dancing watching the yellow sports car swerving and speeding down the long road.

"Whoa." Alex, the owner of Red said to his best friend, "they better slow down or they're going to get into an accident." the words had no more than come out of his mouth when they heard the car spin out of control and all of them turned to watch a yellow sports car slam into the white car that had just unsuspectingly turned the corner. Alex and the crowd moved out of the way as the cars crashed together and flipped. They watched the cars land and then a moment later heard the piercing scream

"That's a child." Alex said running towards the crash, his best friend following behind as someone in the group called 911. Alex circled the wreckage. He quickly noticed that the driver of the yellow car was beyond help, the driver of the white car was unconscious, and that the woman in the white car was banging on the window, her body twisted in an unnatural way, pointing behind her at a young girl still strapped into the back seat. He quickly told her to cover her face and he kicked the window out and then he and his best friend grabbed the bloodied girl and pulled her from the car. "Take her over there!" Alex said to his best friend pointing to the crowd by the dance club.

He went back for the woman in the front , but she was trapped, crushed between the seat and the side window and he knew if he attempted to break that glass it would cut her severely. He heard the sirens the same time he saw the sparks and he tried desperately to get the window down or out. As the fires started to grow, he frantically began to kick the small spot on the window she wasn't pressed against.

"Alex come on!" his best friend yelled "it's going to blow!" then ran over to his friend pulling him away from the car as the sirens got closer.

The fiery wreck was a devastating sight to behold to the people who witnessed it. They watched as the remaining person in the car pounded on the window as the flames licked out from the car. The storm and the thick down pour helped, but as the fire department pulled up, the car was still covered in flames.

They watched the fire fighters pull the woman out of the wreckage and then literally run from the car right before it was engulfed in flames

Alex felt horribly; the wonderful party he was throwing for his best friend's engagement had ended disastrously. At least they were able to save the child.

Tempest was in a state of shock and somewhere in between consciousness and unconsciousness. Her brain refused to register her father's broken, bloody body, or the strange smile on her mother's face as she mouthed I love you to her only child with tears in her eyes. She desperately tried to shut out the image of her mother pounding on the window as the firemen scurried around, breaking the front windshield before pulling her out.

She looked like a rag doll as they put her on top of the gurney.

Even though Tempest sat with strangers, soaked to the skin from the cold rain, taking in the horrid scene before her, she did not register her parents' car exploding, and absolutely refused to see her father disappear with the big ball of fire projecting into the sky like some rocket launch. Instead she closed her eyes and promptly went to sleep.

***

After the Rush family left, the Stone's went into the family room to continue their evening. Darleen insisted that they all enjoy a movie together and even let the boys pick it this time. Dorian and Dante sipped cognac and played chess while Davis sat on the chocolate colored Italian leather sofa opposite from the matching one where his mother sat.

"I'm convinced Tempest is never going to grow." Davis teased his mother, knowing how sensitive she was about the topic. "She's like half of a toothpick." he joked as he lounged on the sofa, eating potato chips, despite the large meal he recently finished.

"She's getting a little taller." Darleen said in Tempest's defense. Tempest was tiny for her age, but Darleen was convinced she had grown more over the last year.

"No she's not." Dorian chuckled, Tempest had always been tiny and she hadn't grown in some time.

"She is getting bigger." Darleen adamantly insisted. "We had to buy her a whole new wardrobe, her clothes are getting small on her."

"Woman, you'll use any old excuse to buy that girl a new wardrobe." Davis teased as he grinned ear to ear. He knew by the look on his mother's face that if she was any closer she would smack him.

"That's enough Davis." Darleen scolded him.

"The only thing getting bigger on her is her mouth." Dante grumbled, sparking Davis and Dorian to laugh, but Dorian simmered down seeing the look in his wife's eye. "She's a mouthy little brat." Dante finished

"Dante!" Darleen started to object when the phone rang. She quickly got up and answered it as her family continued to talk.

"And her ego." Davis grinned, "that's gotten real big lately."

"That's because she's spoiled." Dante frowned as he waited for his father to make his move on the chess board, "no one ever tells that girl no." He knew one day someone would tell her no and he also knew she would not take it well. He commiserated with the person who dared tell the great and powerful Tempest Rush- no.

"Hello?" Darleen spoke into the phone. Dorian was laughing when he heard the phone drop and turned to see it had broken on the floor

"What is it Dar?" He asked standing up from the chess table, knowing something was wrong. Darleen turned to her husband, unable to repeat the words the officer on the phone had just told her. Tears began pouring from her eyes as the color drained from her face and the words she had just heard spun a thick web in her brain, stunning her into oblivion. She felt the air escape from her lungs and the room grow dark before there was nothing. Dorian, Davis and Dante all dashed towards her, but Dorian was quicker and caught her before she hit the floor.