Playing With Fire (12 page)

Scruffy
but plentiful bandits were overpowering my brothers. I heard Jake scream at
Vaze to get me out of there, but Vaze refused to leave my brothers. An
extremely beefy bandit attacked Al, and knocked him out with ease. The rest of
my brothers were subdued, Jake being last of them. Vaze continued to fight, but
was eventually knocked out by a bandit who snuck up behind him. I cursed at
myself for not being able to help. The pain made it so I could hardly move at
all.

My
sight grew fuzzy and the sky started to fade. A small pool of blood began to
form on the ground below me as it started to stain my hands. I could only stare
in horror and disbelief as I bled. Soon enough, my hands began to blur and the
edges of my sight went dark. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and the last
thing I managed to see was a massive hulking figure standing over me. Then it
all went black.

I
woke when I was thrown violently against a stiff wooden board. My eyes flew
open and my head whipped around in confusion. I tried to rub my head where the
impact had hit, but found that my hands were bound, and as my senses returned,
I realized my mouth was poorly gagged and my legs were bound as well. My
brothers were all unconscious around me and tied up. Vaze sat across from me,
fully awake. As I looked around, I remembered what had happened the night
before, mostly because I was in a hay cart driven by the bandit I recognized as
the archer. We were traveling along a rough dirt road cutting through a
pleasant wood. Not an ideal place to imagine a kidnapping, huh?

 At
first I thought the archer was the only bandit around, but fleeting figures
hidden in the trees showed me the rest of the bandits were still there. A wheel
hit bump and I was thrown against another wall of the cart.

Vaze
chuckled, and I shot him a menacing glare that told him what I’d do if I wasn’t
tied up. I struggled to sit up, and was thrown into Vaze as a back wheel caught
another bump. As I tried to get off him another wheel hit a bump and we were
both tossed into another wall, and I unfortunately hit the wall first, making
Vaze’s impact less, but mine more. We tried to get up, and were tossed forward
and Vaze landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me, but also made my gag
slip off my mouth.

“Stop
falling on top of me!” I hissed, quiet enough so the bandit wouldn’t hear me.

“Mphmph!”
Vaze mumbled behind his gag in protest.

“I
can’t understand you, come here!” Vaze moved his face closer to mine and I bit
the part of the gag on his cheek. Vaze yelped, and I released the gag, and a
bit of his reddish pink cheek that I accidentally bit as well. I felt a bit of
guilt from biting his cheek by mistake.

“Sorry,”
I said before trying again. As carefully as I could, I bit the cloth softly to
make sure I didn’t get his cheek again. Confident I didn’t get any of his
cheek, I clamped down on the cloth and slowly pulled back my neck. Slowly but
surely, the knots loosened, and Vaze’s gag slipped off his face and I spit the
gag out of my mouth. We struggled to get away from each other again, but were
thrown against another wall, but this time Vaze broke my fall (served him
right).

“If
we keep trying to get up, this ridiculous process is going to continue!” Vaze
hissed.

“That
won’t stop me from trying!” I said as I wriggled away, and was immediately
thrown back at him. I continued this process about fifty more times until I
gave up, but that was mostly because this time Vaze had tried to move a little,
and ended up landing on top of me. I let out a sigh of defeat and tried not to
inhale Vaze’s hair.

“Well,”
Vaze said with his head next to my ear, but not sounding nearly as disappointed
as he should have. “I guess we’re going to have to stay like this until we
stop.”

The
cart lurched to a stop as soon as Vaze finished his sentence. We held our
breaths as the bandit got out of the cart. The sound of more bandits coming out
of the cover of the trees came to my ears. I looked up at the sky, and realized
we had come to a break in to woods, and that it had also just broke into
morning from the pinkish sky. The bandits all let out a blood curdling battle
cry and the sound of pounding feet told me they were leaving the cart behind. I
nudged Vaze and he rolled off of me. I wriggled my way up to my knees to see
what was happening.

None
of the bandits had stayed with the cart. Instead they were all charging with
swords and bows drawn towards a small village, if you could call it that at
all. It was more like a dozen huts and a barn tossed together. Men and boys not
much older than me ran out of the huts with tools used for tending fields to
meet the bandits. Their faces were full of fear, but I saw determination in all
their eyes—even if it meant death, they were not going to leave their families.

I
sat with wide eyed horror as I watched. Blood splattered everywhere, staining
the ground red. None of the villagers fled, not even the young boy I spotted in
the crowd tending a fallen villager that must have been his father. He tried
desperately to cover his father’s gaping wounds to stop the bleeding. Tears
streamed down his face as his father’s gaze began to grow distant and glassy.
The father’s eyes closed, but still the boy refused to leave him.  A bandit
came up to him with a bloodthirsty grin as he raised his sword above his head.
He brought it down on the boy, and he died screaming.

Soon
after, the battle ended, and bodies littered the ground like leaves. None of
the bandits joined the body count—all were alive and laughing. I thought it couldn’t
get any worse. I didn’t know how wrong I was.

The
bandits went into the huts and dragged out screaming women, children, and even
babies. The women were put into a group and a couple of bandits guarded them
with devilish grins. The screaming, crying children and infants were corralled
into the barn like cattle. A woman in the group screamed and tried to break
free, but was tossed aside by a guard. A bandit lit a torch, and threw it onto
the hay around the barn. It burst into flames, and began to lick the barn full
of children.

Anger,
hatred, and pure horror began to build up inside me. I would never forgive the
evil I had seen, or the evil they were about to commit. Scum like them didn’t
deserve to live. All I wanted to do was make them suffer. They deserved it.
They were going to get it.

Black
fire ate away at my binds, and I broke through the ropes, freeing myself. Vaze
stared at me with wide eyes, but I didn’t take notice in him. I only wanted to
make them suffer. A deep inhuman growl came from deep within my chest, and my
eyesight took on a slightly reddish tint like that of blood fogging water.

With
incredible speed and strength, I launched myself off the cart, and directly at
the nearest bandit. Before I even touched the ground, I shot one hand at the
back of his throat. The claws on my powerful hands tore through his neck, and
he was dead before he even felt pain. I tossed him off my stony skin and
launched myself at the next bandit. I grabbed his head in my hands and snapped
his neck with a sickening wet crack. The other bandits began to realize what
was happening, and archers let loose a flurry of arrows as the bandit, who I
assumed was the leader, barked orders.

The
arrows hissed through the air towards me, and I waited until the last second to
dash out of the shadow of the mist of arrows. I reached one of the archers and
snatched away an arrow he was hurriedly trying to aim. I stabbed him with it and
shot towards the two bandits near the barn. I used my hands like daggers and
stabbed both in the chest with my claws. I kicked off the barricade on the door
of the barn and children came streaming out. I didn’t hesitate to attack the
bandits guarding the women. They were dead within a minute, and I searched
around for the leader. The hulking figure of the leader disappeared into a hut.
I walked towards it slowly.

Grass
crunched under my boots with each step I took, until finally I came upon the
poorly made hut. I knocked down a wooden wall with one mighty swipe of my leg and
the rest of the home caved in. Broken shards of a mirror were scattered among
the mess reflecting everything from every angle. The huge bandit tried to
scramble out of the rubble and run, but I caught him by his neck. I lifted him
off his feet above my head, with one stone grey hand around his neck.

“Please!”
he pleaded. “Please don’t kill me! I’ll give you anything!”

“Give
your life for those you’ve taken!” I hissed with an inhuman voice.

He
struggled and cried as I tightened my grip around his throat. I smiled. I
wanted him to suffer. His contorted expression of agony and fear pleased me.

“Scarlet,
don’t!” a woman’s voice called from my right. I turned my head to find a woman
with golden curly hair and purple eyes. “This isn’t who you are! You have to
fight it! Look what this madness has made you!”

She
held up a mirror fragment and I saw the reflection of a monster, about to kill
a terrified, pitiful man. The monster had stone grey skin and reddish eyes. Its
hands had long sharp claws covered in blood. Tiny horns had begun to poke from
its forehead. It was a demon no matter what angle it was viewed from, a herald
of death, an abomination. And then I realized that monster was me.

I
dropped the man and looked at my hands in horror. They were covered in blood. I
hadn’t realized what I had done until it was too late. I had taken numerous
lives of humans. It didn’t matter that they were horrible evil scum—they were
human.

I
dropped to my knees and let out a cry of horror and disbelief. The terrified
man ran away into the woods. Tears began to stream down my face, and I begged
myself to let this all be a dream. I didn’t want to be a monster. I didn’t want
to kill people, no matter how evil they were.

“Scarlet!”
Vaze yelled as he ran to me. I searched for the woman, but she was gone. I
looked up at Vaze through blurry, tear filled eyes. He stopped short, almost in
amazement, but his eyes softened and he walked over to me. He took me in his
arms and cradled me in a comforting way. I didn’t pull away. I began to cry
harder, because I was shocked and frightened. I was scared of the monster I had
become.

“How
did this happen to me?” I managed to say between sobs. Vaze hushed me.

“It’s
gone,” he said in a soothing tone. “You’re the same. Velkire can’t control you,
look.” He held a shard of the mirror to my face, and I was the same old me. No
red eyes, no horns, no grey skin.

“He
did that to me?” I sobbed out. My worst fear had been realized. The dream had
been real, and suddenly I could feel the design slashed into my body,
underneath my skin.

“It’s
alright,” Vaze cooed. “I’m not going to let him do that to you anymore. I won’t
let him hurt you, or your family.”

I
didn’t respond. I just kept crying. I clutched handfuls of Vaze shirt in my
hands as I sobbed, staining his garbs with the blood of the bandits. He didn’t
seem to care. Vaze stroked my hair and hushed me softly, as if trying to put a
baby to sleep. Soon enough my sobs turned to sniffling and I pulled away.

“How
did you know about it?” I asked while wiping the last tear from my eye.

“You
didn’t use your fire against the vampire queen when she had Al,” Vaze said.
“You wouldn’t take chances like that unless you were forced to. It was only
suspicion then, but after you collapsed when the bandits attacked, my
suspicions were confirmed.”

“We
should leave,” Vaze said as we walked back to the cart to free my brothers.
“We’ll use the horse and cart. After all, the bandits won’t need it.”

We
found that all of my brothers were still unconscious, but this time I didn’t
wake them. I cut their bindings, removed their gags, and let them sleep. They
didn’t have to know about the horror that had happened yet.

We
left the village, unable to do anything for the widows that now inhabited the once
pleasant farming village. I finally noticed that my silk shirt and over coat
had both been stained brown with dried blood, though I still didn’t know why. I
wasn’t going to fix it, not while Vaze and my brothers were around, that was
for sure. The smoke of the fire could still be seen hours later in the sky,
when we were miles away. I sat on the seat of the cart while Vaze rode the
horse that carried it. My brothers didn’t wake up until near night fall, and by
then I was drifting off into sleep. Vaze told my brothers what had happened,
and they decided not to stop until we arrived at the camp. After switching from
Vaze riding the horse to Jake riding it, I finally dozed off.

~

“Scarlet,”
a voice whispered in my ear. I ignored it and turned onto my side. “Scarlet,” the
voice said a little louder impatiently. I opened my eyes a tad, but drifted back
off just the same.

“Scarlet!”
yelled the voice as someone pushed me over. I jolted awake scrambling. I was
still in the cart and my brothers were sleeping along with Vaze.  I assumed we
had stopped for the night. I was about to go back to sleep when something
caught my eye. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, because it was
staring right at me with curious purple eyes. And it wasn’t an ‘it’. It was the
woman from before at the village.  I jumped back in surprise and shock.

“You’ve
gotten so big,” she whispered happily while grabbing me into a hug. “You have
no idea how long I’ve waited to see you again.”

“Um,”
I said awkwardly. “Okay?”

“Listen
carefully,” she said with a sudden seriousness. “If you continue in the
condition you are in you will be consumed by the demon that has been placed
inside you.”

“Who
are you?” I interrupted, but the woman held up a hand to quiet me down.

“Just
listen to what I have to tell you first!” she scolded. “At the camp the prince
is taking you to, there is a priestess. She can put a seal on the curse Velkire
placed on you, and you might be able to use your powers again, but you have to
be extremely careful to control yourself until she does.”

“Why?”
I cut in.