I reached the school’s auditorium and stepped out onto its glossy floor by the time Kyle turned around to look at me. He raised an eyebrow, confused to see me by myself and dumbstruck to even see me at all. I stopped a few feet in front of him when he finally formulated a thought.
“Where’s Ryan?”
I didn't move. I found myself hanging on indecision, but it was now or never and the anger didn't let up.
Where's Chris?
I brought the pistol forward and pulled the trigger, only to see him flinch and bring out his own to shoot back. I kept firing as fast as I could and quickly made my way over to a backdrop as bright blasts of hot metal flew past my body.
I threw myself behind the soft cover and hid my head underneath my arms as bullet holes riddled the thin membrane above and on either side of me, the explosive sounds echoing off in the giant chamber. I shook as the last shot rang out and looked down at my own gun. The slide was hanging out halfway past the handle. I was out of bullets, but I could still hear Kyle swear at me from the other side, almost out of breath. He sounded like he was in pain. I must have hit him at least once. I couldn't have missed every single shot.
I strained to get up and nearly cried out as a piercing sensation immediately pulled me back down. I hunched over and put a hand on my stomach, pulling back to see a deep red pool of blood starting to drip from the underside of my clothing. I couldn't believe it was all coming from me.
I struggled to control my breathing as the shock began to set in. I had just gotten shot. It felt so surreal, yet the feeling of ten knives being driven into my stomach repeatedly begged to differ. I reached up and put a hand on a wooden frame to pull myself along, the excruciating pain forcing every single effort to take up all my strength. I tried to focus on the sound of his voice.
“Knox wants you alive, Jessica!”
I could see part of his shadow move as I crossed a beam and worked on flanking him from the opposite side that I had come in.
“But I have no problem killing you! Do you fucking hear me?”
I winced as my body continued to spill out and warm my hand. I understood loud and clear. I leaned against a wooden scaffolding and peered through a crack to see him scour the backdrop for me with his gun still in hand. I took out my spent magazine to throw it away on a whim and watched as he turned to face the sound, immediately shooting into the area and sending his lead downrange away from me.
I made a run straight for him.
He turned as soon as he realized what was happening and I screamed. He took an extra split second longer than he had and I managed to pistol whip his hand to the side just in time to miss another bullet, the flash of light almost blinding me as I tried leveraging my weight to disarm him.
We fought over his gun and it went off again and again, each time closer to my face until it ended with a sharp
crack
and curse
as I broke one of his fingers. The gun dropped and he threw his hand forward.
I blocked his forearm to the side only to get a left hook square against my jaw. I immediately dropped onto the deck, dizzy from the pain. I looked up just in time to see another fist crash itself into my skull and I spilled over onto the floor.
I watched a thin stream of crimson stretch itself from my mouth and out onto the shiny panels of wood in front of me. I struggled to get my hands on something solid while the world continued to spin around me. I was in no way ready for a fight. I wasn’t even as good as I thought I was. I had been delirious thinking I could do anything at all.
The sudden realization began to dawn a little too late by the time Kyle pulled me up by the hair. “How many times is it gonna take?” He pulled out his taser and stabbed it into my stomach. He let it loose longer than I had ever felt before, the wave of pain forcing me to scream as loud as I could until the air in my lungs burned like the sharp jolt of electricity that shot itself across my body and burnt nerves. He finally let go and I hit the floor, curling up into a ball as I pressed my limbs against my belly and watched his feet step around my face. “Do you know what your problem is?”
I let myself think about it. It was the pain.
He grabbed me by the hair again and pulled my head up so that I looked at him.
I needed to stop thinking about the pain.
“You need to start fucking following directions.” He pulled his arm back again and I smiled, making him stop.
“Thank you.” I could taste the copper in my mouth while I flashed my teeth and he held me still. It caught him off guard.
“For what?” He waited until he heard a
click
and then I jammed my pocket knife as deep as I could into his thigh repeatedly.
I wouldn’t have been able to do that by myself.
He quickly shot away and stumbled onto his back. I painstakingly got up and he put a hand on his leg, cursing at me and trying to stop the bleeding, but thought better of it and began waving the taser through the air to try and ward me off as I got closer.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
I swiped my knife at him until it met his wrist and he let go. I picked up the taser in my other hand and watched as he scrambled to try and get away. I brought them both up. “One of these leaves a mark...” I sidestepped a kick and threw the taser into his side and watched as it forced him to scream out in pain. I took the opening to straddle him and pushed the knife up against his throat. “Guess which one I’m gonna use?”
He pushed his head back against the floor and I pressed on, just barely leaving a mark next to the beating vein in his neck. “Fuck you.”
I leaned my head down against his, his face just inches from my own. I wanted to see it in his eyes when I took his life away. All I had to do was push my hand to the side and he would spill out onto the floor in front of me. He glared at me as my hand started to tremble.
I readjusted my grip and tried to force my muscles to move, but they wouldn’t work. The knife stayed put. I pushed his head back and screamed at him. He needed to die. He had killed Chris. He was the source of suffering for countless others and he wouldn’t stop. He wasn’t even afraid. I needed to kill him. I shook my head as tears started to roll down my cheeks and drop down onto his face. The words barely made it past the blood in my mouth. “You don’t deserve to live!”
He only stared at me. He didn’t even deny it. He didn’t beg for his life or ask for forgiveness. He knew what he was doing and he didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn about himself or anybody else. I could feel my fingers loosen around the handle until he moved without warning. He lifted his head up and I pushed it back down, almost forcing me to cut into his skin, but I blinked. I had almost killed him.
I visualized the knife severing the front of his neck in two like a stick dragged through still water. His blood would have immediately began to flow over my hands and pool onto the wood paneling in front of me while I would watch him gasp for air like a fish out of water, choking on the red. I wouldn’t understand what was happening until his eyes would bore through my own and stop moving entirely. I would lean over him, frozen, staring at his lifeless face. But it never happened. Instead, I watched him swallow, the soft bump in his throat diving underneath the blade and back up as he took another breath to chastise me.
“You don’t have the balls.”
I took a long breath and stared at the knife. He was right. I didn’t. “You’re right.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, confused, but I wasn’t done yet.
“Neither do you.”
His eyes lit up as he struggled to get free. “Fuck you.”
I slammed his head back down and shoved the taser underneath his chin.
You wish.
I set the taser off and let him clench his jaw in agony for as long as I could help it. He almost passed out by the time I grabbed his hand and laid it flat on the floor with his palm facing up. I pressed my knife against his fingers and let him go, only pausing to stand up and sandwich the blade between his flesh and the bottom of my boot.
He began to reach out with his other arm and I pressed down ever so gently just to get him to stop, the metal digging further into his digits.
“You’re never going to hurt anyone else. Do you understand?” I pressed down a little harder and looked down at him as he nodded, his face turning beet red in between shouting obscenities at my face and pleading for mercy. “You’re never going to touch another girl so long as you’re alive. You’re not going to look at them. You’re not going to talk to them, or even breathe on them.” I gazed at the wooden panels beside his body and let myself go. I had always been good at keeping promises. “Or I swear to God I’ll find you.”
I shoved all the weight into the heel of my boot and stomped the knife into the wood, easily breaking through the resistance with the sudden snap of his delicate bones.
He immediately cried out in pain and curled over to hug the stump of his hand.
I didn’t even bother looking at it. I didn’t want to see. The pain was for him, anyway. There’d be no point. I had my own to deal with.
I grabbed my knife and walked into the nearest hallway before collapsing against a locker in a lightheaded daze, smearing a whole line of red across the blue paint. I couldn’t guess how much of it I had lost already. I hadn’t felt the pain, the fear or the emptiness, but I didn’t have to. I had already felt the sensations myself. I had come so close to killing Kyle that I had a hard time convincing myself he was still alive.
The muffled sound of gunfire finally registered in my mind and I looked at the nearest exit. Something was going on outside. Jeremy must have gotten caught. I brought myself up and stumbled into the open to meet the light of the moon break the clouds as men, women and children ran yelling down the street from the sound of the firefight. I hadn’t seen so many people at once in such a long time. And they were all afraid.
I dragged my legs across the ground in the opposite direction as random faces ran past on either side of me and bumped into my shoulders. I struggled to break through the frenzy and pushed them out of the way with a single hand while the other pressed against my bleeding stomach.
I stopped at an intersection as gunfire splashed against the walls to my side and sent people scrambling for cover. I reached down and picked up a pistol from a corpse torn in half and looked back over the corner to see an empty street. I quickly walked out onto the road and stepped over another dead body. I had to make things right.
I had to find Jeremy.
The thought barely crossed my mind as I turned another corner and a claw dug itself into my chest, forcing me to fall forward into an arm. I struggled to breathe as the piercing pain shot itself through my body and I was gently lifted up so that I could peer into the cold dark depths of her eyes.
Juno.
She smiled and rows of her red stained teeth parted.
“There you are.” She threw me face first onto the ground and my gun skidded a few feet away from me.
I struggled to stay awake from the pain as I dragged myself across the ground. I had almost reached the handle when she kicked me over onto my back and I swung my knife up, only to have her block the blade with the palm of her hand. I labored to get air into my lungs as I watched her effortlessly pull the piece of metal out of her flesh and shake her head.
“No...” She grabbed my wrist and snapped it like a twig, the pain reverberating up my spine and out as a scream into the night. She knocked my other hand to the side and straddled me, bringing her face inches from mine so that I could smell the iron on her skin and hear the soft whisper part her lips past my ear.
“I know where mother is...” She grabbed my throat and pressed the rock hard nails into either side of my neck, the necklace burning against my soul. “Do you want me to show you?” She squeezed and drew blood, pressing even harder until she tore out the pendant and my entire throat from in front of me in a cloud of red.
I reached up to feel the current flood over my hands while I drowned in my own blood. The overwhelming warmth seeped across my neck and enveloped my body. I struggled to breath and only choked. My vision began to fade. I began to slip over into the void and my heart moved for the last time.
“Breathe.”
I opened my eyes and leaned on my elbow to cough and sputter as air rushed into my throat and back into my lungs. I put a hand underneath my chin and wrapped my fingers around the soft, bone-chilling wet and cold skin, fully expecting gaps among torn flesh, but I was surprised to feel it whole again. I felt my damp chest and it still took me a moment to realize my bones weren’t broken and my blood wasn’t soaking into the ice around me.
Ice…
Startled, I looked around and started to panic as I realized I had been pulled out of the water in the middle of a frozen lake.
“Emma.”
I shot up to stare at the source that called my name, a familiar pair of deep blue eyes barely distinguishable from the dark sky behind them.
Nathan...
The word barely made it past my throat. I put a trembling hand against the side of his face. I could feel the stubble brush up against my palm as he managed to smile and I started to cry. “They tried to kill me.”
“It's okay.” He set his sword down onto the clear blocks and pulled me closer, hushing my sobs as I buried my face against the warmth that radiated from his chest. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
I turned my head to see a pair of bodies as motionless as the moonlit night that gleamed off the blood seeping away from the gaps within their flesh. The only other sign of movement shot itself through the numbness of my bones and rattled my words as they escaped into the still winter air. “I-I’m sorry—”
“Stop.”
I looked up to see him peer down at me and I started to tremble.
“It’s not your fault.”
But it was. I couldn’t control it before and now I couldn’t even control the shaking. A spasm shot through my hands and I finally let go of a small bloody dagger to hear a metallic clatter. Something was wrong. I could feel the fading pulse through my veins as if they were my own, the sharp stabs of pain barely making it past my frozen nerves.
Nathan slowly hunched forward, a soft cry of torture slipping away from his lips as he struggled to stay upright, his breathing shallow and labored.
“Nathan...” I leaned over his body and stared into his eyes as they gradually tore into the sky and then back into my own. I lifted the hand from just below his chest to see his suit garment deeply soaked and shaded crimson. I put a trembling palm on the wound, but it was all I could do as the steaming blood flowed around my numb fingers.
“Nathan!” I started to cry. My tears hit his chest. I didn’t even have to focus. I could already tell it was too late. “You’re—”
“I know.” He put a hand on my face, a soft smile forming on his lips as he transfixed on something that only he could ever see. “And you’re beautiful…”
I closed my eyes and I could feel myself losing control again. I started to slip away, my consciousness slowly fixing itself back into the right time and place. I held myself until I could feel the hard cement against my back, until I could smell the sweet summer air hit my lungs, until I was back in Arrino.
I dared myself to crack my eyes open and looked up to see Juno still standing above me with a snarl on her face, but she was frozen in place. The bloody heart necklace dangled from her hand above my nose and everything else had remained the same except for the unnatural stillness that hung in the air. I was back, but I was still alive.
Time had stopped moving.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
I recognized the voice, the darkened smooth words reminiscent of molten glass. I recognized the feel of her mind plastered against my own. I swung my head around to meet a woman in a corset with straight jet black hair that hung loose below her shoulders. Her face was radiant, yet sharp and fierce. I wobbled as I got back onto my feet and took a step back from her. I was too afraid to say it out loud. Even then, the thought was still cut short. “You’re—”
“Emma.” She was the one that had haunted my dreams and split my reality in two as I relived moments of her life. There was no mistaking it. She was the witch. She took me in for a moment before walking towards me in steps that poured utter confidence. “And you’re Tess.”
I shook my head and closed my eyes. I didn’t—
“Understand?”
No.
I didn’t want to. She was in my—
Thoughts. Telling me exactly what I was thinking.
I urged myself to see her stop a few feet in front of me. She must have known.
“About the dreams?” She took another step forward and I continued until my back hit a wall. “They’re real, Tess.”
It was impossible. They couldn't have been real.
She
shouldn't even have been real, but now she was inside my mind, a concept so foreign and overwhelming that I thought I was going to throw up again. It forced me to think about the bodies that she had left in her wake. I had seen the trail of death and despair that followed her everywhere she had been. “You killed all those people...”
“They were suffering. So I brought them peace.” She took another step towards me and lifted a hand, only to stop as I flinched. She smiled politely before continuing, gently running her fingers through my hair. “I know you’re well on your way to understanding.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? I immediately grabbed her wrist and glared at her. The circumstances were different. I wasn’t anything like her. She already knew what I was thinking, but I let it loose anyway. “You don’t know shit.”
She managed another smile, amused. “Look at you, all grown up. Where was all this confidence when your mother died?”
What?
My fingers slid off as she slowly pulled her arm away and walked back towards the street. “You’re a monster, Tess.” She stopped at Juno and gazed into her dark eyes before turning back to look at me. “Trust me, I know my monsters. I created them.”
My thoughts bounced back to what the real monster had said. “You're mother...”
She put a hand on Juno’s face, smitten. “She always did have a problem getting along with others. She was the first.”
I watched as she admired Juno's hair. I had almost died at her hand. I had felt myself letting go, but for some reason I was still alive. I double checked my throat and looked down to poke a finger through the hole above my stomach, only to feel baby smooth skin. The wounds were gone. Emma had saved my life.
She smiled at the thought. “You're not going to die.” She took another step forward, making sure to keep the full force of her eyes barring my soul. “Not yet. This is my story, not yours.”
I tried to say something, but nothing came out. I didn’t understand.
She crept closer. “You're beginning to wake, but you need to become stronger.”
I almost trembled at the thought. How could anything good come from it? “I don't want to.”
“I don't care.” She stopped in front of me and put her fingers against my chin, tilting my head up, surprising me even further by leaning in and pressing her lips against my own.
I closed my eyes. I didn't pull back. I fell into the warmth.
She let go and put a palm on the side of my face, the cuts and bruises now gone. “You're mine now, do you understand?”
I slowly nodded. I gave in to the feeling, into the seduction to belong to someone else—
something
else bigger than life itself. Nothing would be for me anymore. It would all be for her. It was like a switch had gone off inside of me and I knew I'd kill and die and go to the ends of the earth just for her.
She let go yet somehow kept me still. “You've been so strong...” She pulled a bang back over my ear and I instantly felt so tired that I wanted to cry.
“I have so many questions...”
“I know.” She paused again, bringing my full attention to her eyes. Nothing else existed. “But you need to be patient. You've been strong enough to see my past, but you need to become stronger. You need to wait a little while longer. You need to learn. You need to work against me to gain their trust.”
The idea felt so foreign. “I don't want to hurt you.”
Emma smiled. “You can't.” She began to walk away and I reached out for her like a baby, all the emotions swimming up with an intensity that I had never felt before.
“Please, don't go.”
She held still and graced me enough to turn around, a perfect smile on her lips. “Wake up, Tess.”
Tess, wake up.
An intense heat instantly filled my body and I could hear somebody shout my name. The voice urged me to blink and Emma disappeared, only to be replaced by a man with fierce blue eyes that took his hand off my face and grabbed my shoulders and shook me until I finally snapped out of my daze.
“Tess!”
I stared at him as sight, sound, and feeling flew back into my body. Time was flowing again and the witch was gone. I looked down to see dull metal forearm guards mounted above his wrists until he forced me to turn my eyes.
“Hey! Look at me! I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Nathan Grey.
“Nathan...” The word slipped out of my mouth and seemed to catch him off guard for a moment.
Behind him, Juno had already gotten back onto her feet with a new light to her voice. “Grey! Mother was here! Can’t you feel it?”
He gently pushed me back by the arm. “Stay behind me.” I stepped into his shadow and watched as he turned to face her, his trench coat billowing around him as two sheathed swords weighed the rest down against his back. He reached up and grabbed a handle, but stopped short as Juno squared off against him. “You're not taking her.”
She smiled. “She belongs to me. She belongs to mother.”
“Your mother was a whore and she’s dead, just like you should be.”
Juno screamed and lunged at him, only to miss as he effortlessly stepped out of the way to draw a hidden machete, the blade slicing through the air like a whip that opened up a long gash along her arm with a flick of the wrist. She recoiled back and hissed in protest.
I immediately bolted in the opposite direction and ran away as fast as I could. I could feel the soles of my worn feet start to tare each time they pounded onto the smooth pavement in front of me, but I couldn't stop moving. I didn’t know what they were or what they wanted and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I didn’t get too far before Grey noticed.
“Tess! Stop!”
I glanced back just as I tripped over my own feet and hit the dirt. I quickly rolled onto my back and brought my arms over my face, closing my eyes and trying to brace for the pain to hit again, but it never came. I slowly lowered my trembling hands and peered through the cracks of my skin to look at Juno’s claw hovering a foot away from my face, her muscles tense as an invisible force held her back. I could only stare as she bared her fangs and pressed onward, the skin around her knuckles peeling back as she shred them against the hidden grate that was saving me from death.
“Get up.” I silently screamed at my limbs and forced them to obey Grey as he made his way to me with a hand in the air, his open palm facing Juno and constraining her to stay still. “Stay
behind
me.” He gently pushed me back and dropped his hand abruptly, almost making Juno tumble over herself out of breath.
She looked up at him and barred her teeth, the sound of the air rushing through resembling a wounded animal. “Someone’s been practicing.”
Grey pointed the tip of his blade at her. “Well we can’t all be as pretty as you, now can we?” I watched as the skin around her hand mended itself in a matter of seconds while she stood. Grey shook his head. “Don’t try it.”
She smiled at him again, the curve of her lips barring the points of her teeth. “Who do you think is faster?”
He held his palm up and my ears began to pop from the sudden drop in air pressure. “You won’t…”
She waited for a moment, the smile on her face gradually bending into a snarl. “You should know better.” She lunged and Grey threw his hand forward, instantly generating a shock wave that billowed out and threw both of us away from him in an explosion of dust.
I gasped as the immense force pushed all the air out of my lungs and flung me back into the air, completely weightless and unprepared to meet the solid brick wall that stopped me in an instant. My head fell back a split second later and swung into a window, the small pieces of glass raining down on top of me as I fell back down and hit the ground motionless.