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“I guess you’re still packing.” Tabby’s voice startles me. I snap upright, half expecting to see the Butcher or Baza behind her. But she is alone.
Now she is rocking black chinos with millions of pockets, military-green Martens and an outdoorsy jacket. A backpack is strapped to her back. I don’t know how far we will need to walk, but judging by her get-up, we’ll be trekking through the wilderness for a while.
“Yeah, wasn’t sure what to pack”, I mumble.
“I got everything we need”, she declares. “You need to pack a change of clothes and a toothbrush”.
She is in charge and she loves it.
She marches to the bag section in the wardrobe, pulls out a small and pretentious black-sequined backpack and stuffs into it a cream jumper, a yellow T-shirt and bright pink jeans. Clearly the trekking gear is reserved only for the expedition leader and the rest of us can look like parrots.
In the bathroom I grab the toothbrush I opened earlier and a bar of soap, scooping a few underwear garments along the way, and shove it all in my backpack.
“Okay. We’re all ready”, she announces brightly. A wide grin spreads across her face.
“Okay, let’s do this.” I strap my less practical backpack on.
I follow Tabby out of the door and into the familiar lift. She reaches up, presses the top button on the panel, and I can feel the lift moving down as I feel a gentle push at my ribcage.
The lift pings and again we are in the ostentatious foyer I saw yesterday, only today Tabby leaves our lift and leads me to the one next to it.
This one looks more like a service lift. It doesn’t have any frills, just a big, heavy-duty metal cage behind the lift’s doors. Tabby is confident when she stretches on her toes and pushes a button on the top row of the dial, then settles cross legged on the floor by the wall.
And again we go down.
“Tabby, shouldn’t we have arrived by now?” I whisper in the silence, interrupted only by the occasional grinding sound of metal behind the lift’s doors. I feel uneasy in the metal cage which still keeps moving, even after ten minutes, with no end in sight.
“No”, she giggles, “it’ll be much longer than that”.
I’m tired of standing, so I sit on the floor across from her. Tabby is completely relaxed and at ease, confident in her plan. Her confidence helps to calm my nerves a bit and for the first time since I asked for her help, I believe that maybe I have a chance to get out of this place.
The metal cage jerks to a stop, yanking me out of my sleep. I fell asleep at some point during the ride and now I’m sitting stiff and disoriented, like a rabbit dragged out of a sack. I don’t know how long I’ve been out.
My stiff body is arguing with me, refusing to do what it’s been told, and it takes me a while to unwrap my legs from the pretzel position and to straighten my back and push myself up.
Tabby is already by the open door, disapprovingly eyeing my clumsy rising.
I freeze, gaping open mouthed at the terrain opening in front of me, past the open doors of the lift.
The landscape lying ahead is bare to the horizon.
It’s a burnt-out, lifeless surface of a wasteland, scorched by vicious heat. Red brownish dry soil is cracked on the top. Low, charred bushes dot the landscape. Their branches, like the broken and bent arthritic fingers of an old witch, are spread wide, ready to snag on clothes.
Further in the distance, rocky hills are jagged on the red horizon, slicing the black billowing smog, rolling over them with their sharp, broken teeth. The strong wind gusts over the wasteland, carrying dust and dirt, waiting to scratch the cornea of an unwelcomed visitor.
The black smog is billowing over the horizon, obscuring the reddish-orange sky. The orange glow that manages to trickle through the smog, dimly lights up the empty terrain. It is an apocalyptic wasteland reminiscent of the surface Mars.
As I take the first step off the lift and onto the bare clay red ground, the stench of rotting rubbish, heightened by the sauna hot air, hits my nose. I have never been on top of a city dump in scorching mid-July, but I imagine it would smell just like this.
The hot air is sticky and scorching. It burns inside my throat as it slides into my lungs. I’m fighting for every bit of oxygen in this burning air, and when I manage to get some into my lungs, reflux, brought on by the stench, squeezes my throat and I wish I hadn’t taken that breath. My stomach loudly rumbles, reminding me that I haven’t had breakfast today.
Looking ahead at this post-apocalyptic horror, I understand Tabby’s attempt at trekking gear. I only wish we had access to an air-conditioned all terrain vehicle with plenty of air fresheners inside or a military grade tank.
Tabby hikes up her backpack on her shoulders and decisively sets off into the wilderness without checking if I’m following her. I’m more afraid to be lost in here than to be led on the wrong path, so I sprint after her. Tabby’s grey wings are folded tightly against her back.
“Tabby, are you sure you know where we’re going?” I call to her after a while. The terrain is empty and quiet, only the sound of the wind carrying dust swishes in the air.
My voice is muffled by the fabric mask that I constructed out of the yellow T-shirt Tabby jammed into my backpack. My DIY mask blocks some smell and stops most of the dust and dirt.
With a nerve twisting pitch, the dirt scratches on the lenses of my old glasses that I found jammed in the pocket of my jeans and now put on my nose to serve as safety goggles. I am thankful to my old habits and that I stuffed my old glasses in the pocket, as now I can use them as a plastic barrier between the high speed dirt and my eyes. I pull off my sweatshirt as I walk, and although the impulse to dump it by the side of the road is strong, I wrap it around my waist, just in case.
We have wandered for a few miles now and I don’t see any obvious path or road that Tabby might be following. The charred landscape hasn’t changed a bit, only the broken teeth of the hills have moved to our left.
“Don’t worry, Ariel, I know how to get to the Gates”, she calls to me over the sound of the wind, glancing over her shoulder at me, still chirpy and upbeat. The smell and dirt don’t seem to bother her in the slightest as her pace remains strong and steady. Her back is straight against the scratching gusts with only her head slightly bent down, while I’m stumbling, doubled over, shading my eyes and covering my mouth with the mask.
After trekking for what feels like half a day, with only two short stops under the watchful eye of the Generalissimus Tabby, where I was allowed to drink strictly half of a cup of water and given a squashed cereal bar, the skylight around hasn’t changed. It is neither darkened nor got lighter, and I begin to wonder if this terrain ever gets lit by the sun.
As we trek farther, the charred wasteland of Mars’ landscape begins to change, to include short industrial-looking buildings, covered in dull grey metal sheets, all one storey buildings with no frills, no signage, no windows propped on the cracked soil. Some buildings are no bigger than a garden shed whereas others are as big as a retirement bungalow.
The wind and dust are singing an orchestral cacophony around these buildings. The swoosh of dust brushed on metal, the bangs of thin, loosened metal sheets on the structures, the whistles and billows of the wind in the cavities of the buildings. It’s like all the wind and percussion instruments have gathered together to make the most hideous and annoying racket.
Tabby keeps only to her visible path, marching and swinging her arms, humming to herself and not hiding, as if not expected to be seen or to meet anyone here, in spite of the evidence of a progressing industrial revolution.
Metal buildings now appear more often as we get farther ahead. Through the blackening smog, I spy a large, dark outline, reaching high into the sky ahead of us, but from that far away, I can’t figure out what it is. It’s slim and tall and every now and again a bright luminescent light bursts out of the top of it, like the quick beam of a lighthouse, before going dark again.
“Tabby, what’s that?” I call after her, slowing down behind her, squinting through the smog at the mysterious outline. Sand and dust crunch on my teeth, no longer stopped by the mask. The stench of rotting dump is still here and as poignant as before, but I must have got used to it, as I no longer want to bring up my guts with every breath.
Tabby stops and looks back at me. I point behind her, to the dark outline.
Just as she turns to follow the direction of my pointing finger, the ‘lighthouse’ lights up again, emitting a glorious white light, beaming it up to the sky.
As the flash dies, Tabby turns to me with a sad face. The corners of her lips are pulled down, as the top lip is riding over the bottom one and I think she is about to cry. Her eyes are betraying the torment raging inside her. The deep grief in her eyes looks wise and ancient, and at that moment she looks like a small old lady.
She walks back to me.
“What did Baza tell you about this place?” she asks me in a stranger’s voice and it feels as if Tabby grew up all of a sudden. I’m scared of her now. I don’t know this stranger and I don’t know what it might do.
“Um... that it’s where he lives and I’ll be safe in here...” I mumble, keeping my eyes on her. I don’t know what she wants to hear from me.
“So basically, nothing”. Her shoulders slump as she lifts her suddenly matured, wise eyes at me, looking like a grown up in a child’s body. “That’s one of the ‘processing facilities’ Baza holds in here. They are designed to extract an essence, or what you might call a soul, from beings, which end up here.”
Her explanation is very cryptic, confusing me even more.
“What do you mean “extract the essence”?” My voice is rising against my will as Sam’s words about Mia being after my ‘essence’ pop into my head.
Shit!
That’s why Tabby agreed to help me. That’s why she didn’t tell Sam or Baza about my escape plea, she works with Mia. I spin on the spot, looking for a sign of an ambush, but the surrounding landscape is as uninhabited as a few minutes ago.
“That’s how Baza built his empire for the last GA, it was fed and sustained by essences.” Tabby’s grown up voice is sad and quiet. “And those stupid sorry beings have ended up here of their own will. They agreed to come here; they traded in something infinitely more valuable than their small imagination could give them.”
She sadly shakes her head.
“Tabby, I don’t understand. What beings? How ‘traded’?” I try to control my voice, to stop it from rising with panic and frustration. I know that I need to stay calm around her, especially if she has an on-going episode of god knows what.
I inhale and try a different question.
“Tabby, why are we here?” I ask softly, taking her small hands in mine.
Tabby sighs like a tired old person.
“We are here, because that is the way to the Gates, and it is the fastest way. And you will see soon what beings I’m talking about.”
She takes a long look at me, before she pulls her hands out of mine, huffs the backpack higher on her shoulders and returns to her trekking.
I spit out another mouthful of dust, yank up my canary yellow mask over my nose and mouth and follow Tabby.
The distance between us is growing, forcing me to make another decision. Turning back is not an option now, I’ll never be able to find my way back from here, but even if I did, it would be the way back into a cage, so I clench my teeth and follow Tabby.
As I walk, I shrug the backpack off my back, reach deep into it, and fish out a little fruit knife that I sneaked into my backpack earlier and hid among my knickers. With a careful glance at Tabby’s back, I slide the knife into the back pocket of my jeans, feeling somewhat better and more secure.
Tabby is weaving between dried out shrubs, along the cracked open soil, leading us towards the ominous outline, and with our every step, the beam of the ‘lighthouse’ pulses brighter ahead of us.
The closer we get, the more I can make out a large structure in front of us with a massive chimney poking into the sky, which emits that glorious light now and again, like a large candle or a war searchlight.
I’m so hypnotised by the sight of this beautiful light that I almost miss the sound of a dozen guttural voices approaching us.
The voices are calling to each other, interrupted by sharp claps of whips, reaping the silence of the terrain, followed by weak cries.
I sprint after Tabby, grabbing her arm.
“Tabby”, I whisper, warning her of the voices ahead. “Listen...”
“It’s okay Ariel”, she replies calmly, not trying to lower her voice. “They won’t hurt us. They can’t see or hear us. They are only aware of the branded ones.”
She puts her hand over mine, snaked around her wrists, and I let go of her, uncomfortable and feeling childish under her gaze.
She sets off again and I’m following, staying as close to her as I can, when we come into a scene of what night terrors are made of.
Ahead, blocking our path, a large horde of completely naked and barefoot humans is stretched across the landscape. They shuffle over the cracked ground, blindly roaming around with vacant, compliant eyes, following the universal flow and bumping into each other with a fear when the whip flies. They are behaving like cattle, like a herd of cows or sheep transported over a field.
There must be a couple of hundred of them. Mainly males, of different ages, but I spot a few women and even older children among the group. Their feet are covered in the red dust of the soil. None of the humans are aware of their nudity, not one is trying to cover themselves. Each one in this herd has a bleeding, large, elaborate brand, freshly burnt into the middle of their chests. Some brands are fresh and bleeding profusely, while others are black, charred scars.
The humans are herded by about a dozen of upright, walking Frankenstein’s experiments of crossing dinosaurs with humans. It’s like a T-Rex with human proportions and human limbs. But maybe it’s not a T-Rex. I never was interested in dinosaurs, but those dinosaur men are shit scary.
The ghastly “dinosaur men” are at least seven feet tall, covered in green-yellow scaly skin from head to toe, with steroid grown bodybuilder muscles flexing underneath and a scaly long tail dragging behind each one. Now and again, with a sharp clap, the dinosaur men throw their whips into the crowd of humans, and when the whip makes contact with skin, a little whimper comes from the crowd.
The dinosaurs’ bald heads are much smaller in proportion to their bodies. They are covered in a reptile skin with three rows of horns over it. Horns start with the larger ones on top of their heads and run down their backs and over their tails.
They wear wide, gold spiky bands, encircling their thick necks and their wrists, sporting the same design as the ones on the human chests. Large pieces of fabric, or more like rags, are wrapped around their waists, serving as belts for their whips.
And I scream, from the top of my lungs, when one of them turns its head to me and I take in the full glory of its ghastly face.
These scaly things don’t have any eyes. Their flattened faces, with three horns atop, have only one hideous hole in the middle of the face. I think that those holes must be their mouths as a circle of protruding razor sharp teeth surround the hole. Slime excretes from the hole, coating the front of their bodies in gunk.
I squeak and clap my hand over my mouth, petrified to be spotted, but the lizard sweeps his blind head over to the other side, ignoring me completely.
With the help of their whips, the lizards herd the humans in the direction of the large building with the ‘lighthouse’ attached to it.
There’s no order to the humans’ formation, they weakly trip over stones, unseen by their vacant eyes, and often, when one falls, he brings the nearest down with him.
And then, when the closest lizard opens his mouth, a thick and scaly like an anaconda, snake-tongue flies out of the hole with an incredible speed and whips at the group of humans.
When the tongue makes contact with the body, with a heavy slap it rips out a chunk of flesh out of its victim. The chunk then drops to the ground with a revolting wet thud. The victims whimper like small children, but then they get up and keep on walking. No one helps a fallen victim nor tries to fight the lizards off. It’s like all of them have accepted their fate.
I can’t pull my gaze away from the gruesome procession nor can I move a muscle. Tabby had stopped a few yards away from me, watching the group with sad eyes. Tabby’s grey wings are open wide behind her back, the tips of the feathers trembling with the wind.
When the procession eventually disappears into the thick smog, I manage to remember how to move my laden legs, so I plod towards Tabby.
Tabby turns to me once I’m near. Tears, like fat slugs, roll down her pretty pixie face as her lips tremble. Our gazes meet, but Tabby says nothing. She just turns on the spot, resuming her hiking.
We need to do something. We have to do something. I can’t just leave them like that.
I chase after her.
“Tabby, we have to help these people”, I grab her small arm, turning her around. “We have to do something!”
“We can’t do anything, Ariel. Nobody can. I told you, they are branded”, she whispers in a small shaken voice. Her warm brown eyes are sad, looking at me with pity.
“But there must be a way, Tabby. We need to help them, we need to free them.” My words are coming out of me in a mumbled rush.
“Ariel, they made their choice”, she mutters, sniffling and wiping her eyes and nose with her sleeve. She looks up at me with the sadness and wisdom of the world, which doesn’t fit with her little child’s exterior or with her wiping her snotty nose on her sleeve. “They agreed to the trade, of their free will. It’s done”, she yells at me angrily, fists balling at her sides. She turns and stomps away, kicking at the small stones on the red ground.
Slowly, the sense of finality Tabby is feeling sinks in.
I blindly follow her, unsure what to do or say now, as my mind is trying to process the lizard guards and the human cattle. My mind is churning at everything I have seen. It’s funny how the human mind works, you could’ve been told millions of times about the monsters out there, about the souls, but only once you’ve seen it with your own eyes, you accept it as the truth. Humans are pathetic like that, to believe that something does exist, we need to see it for ourselves, but sadly, not everything can be seen or found.
Unfortunately for me, our way is weaving towards the ‘lighthouse’ building, after the disappeared herd. The building grows ahead of us, revealing more details.
Now I see that, just like all the previous buildings, this structure has no windows. A tall, metal net fence surrounds the building and the ‘lighthouse’. It’s like a massive coal power plant with a lighthouse, like a chimney, shooting high into the sky; only instead of the black smoke of burnt coal, this one is producing a glorious beaming light.
A murmur of muffled screams floats in the air from behind the walls of that building. It’s like the buzz of a bee hive ahead, and as we get closer to the building, it grows louder and louder, and now I can decipher the individual agonising voices, screaming in a sea of suffering, and every time a wave of screams begins, it’s followed by a burst of that glorious light from the chimney.
The screams get louder with every step I take. I can hear a woman’s voice, laced over the scream of a man, followed by the bellowing of another, and another, and another.
I clap my hands over my ears, desperate to cut out this horrific roar. I stumble and stop. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the noise is seeping through my hands, getting through to me and into my heart. I try to walk after Tabby, but my legs get heavier, refusing to obey me, weakened with every scream.
I open my eyes.
Tabby’s small shape is getting farther ahead, fuzzed out by my tears which I can’t even wipe off.
I am staggering drunkenly ahead. I keep my head down, watching the red soil under my feet. Wet droplets appear on the cracked soil in front of me with my every step. I can’t see Tabby anymore, not that I’m looking.
I trip over something and clumsily flapping my arms I land on all fours. Screams burst into my head, ripping me inside, while the stones rip the skin off my knees and hands.
Unsteadily I rise up. Blood is dripping off my hands, leaving droplets of blood on the ground in its wake, to accompany the ones of salty water. I wipe my bloodied hands on my jeans, but the blood keeps on running.
With my hands covered in blood, I don’t know how to cover my ears or how long I can take these screams before I lose my mind. I raise my head and spin, looking for Tabby, for a solution, for a way out. I turn on the spot and that’s then when I see it....
My breath leaves me and with it, my lungs expel a scream as high as I’ve ever heard, ringing in the open, drowning the agonising screams around.
I’m standing in front of a vast field, organised for miles like a vineyard, only instead of the greenery of young emerald vines, human bloodied skins are stretched on the crossed stakes, soaking the stakes and the red soil with blood. The wooden stakes, placed in rows with military precision, are stretching for miles into the horizon.
The gruesome skins have been taken off the bodies in one clean cut: from the neck, down to the fingertips, down to the toes. It’s like the human meat and bones have been scraped out, leaving a shell of skin intact, leaving it out to dry on the stakes. Each stake has a wooden plank on the top, like on the top of a shovel, to keep the skin in place, shoulders stretched over it.
The skins are flapping lazily in the wind like a washing on a line. They have been taken off different bodies: fat and slim, old and young.
All these horrifying skins are headless, making this field even more spine chilling. The smell of decomposing flesh is overwhelming, and that’s the smell of a rotting dump I smelt the second I set my foot onto this red ground.
Next to me, a male’s skin is hanging on a stake, moving slowly with the wind, and that horrifies me even more. His arms, once colourfully tattooed, are now shrivelled, prune corpse’s prune arms. With each gust of wind, they move and rise, reaching to me. It’s like this empty, headless shell is still alive and trying to get off a stake to get back to its everyday human life. Or maybe it’s trying to wave to me, to get my attention, to ask for help.
I double over, bringing up the remnants of the food in my stomach.
My senses are in overload: the smell of decomposing flesh, mingled with the copper smell of blood, the agonising screams, the sting of open wounds on my hands and knees, the lack of oxygen in this humid air, the heat.
I’m heaving, bringing up bile, and I can’t stop.
I feel weaker with every second. I still don’t know where Tabby is. I collapse on my knees, propping myself up on my arms, but topple over to the side the next second.
I draw up my knees to my chest, wanting to disappear, but there’s nowhere to hide in here. I want to call out for Tabby, but I can’t find the energy to do that either. I lay on the ground, weeping, willing myself to get a grip, to get up and move on, but I can’t do it either.
As I lay, weeping weakly, I feel the gentle movement of the air above me and I sense, rather than see, someone next to me, leaning in closer. Thank god, Tabby’s here.
I lift my head.
A wide shadow is spread above me, blocking the weak glow of the sky. Through the tear blurred vision, I can make out black boots on the cracked soil in front of me. Someone’s standing above me. I can’t see much but I know that these boots are too big for Tabby.
Butcher.
Self-preservation whips at me to get up, but as I push myself up, strong arms scoop me off the ground.
“Let go! Let me go!” My voice is hoarse and barely audible as I kick and wriggle in the stranger’s arms. I’m sliding out of his grip, but he’s not planning to let me go, just adjusting his hands on me.
A knife.
I twist my arm, sliding my hand into the back pocket of my jeans. My knife’s still there.
I close my cold fingers over the handle, yanking it out. The sound of ripping fabric adds to the cacophony of noises around me and I can feel the air on my butt through the slit in my jeans.
With as much swing as I can manage in his tight grip, I thrust the little knife blindly in front of myself. The knife slows as its metal sinks into the flesh and instantly his grip on me is released.
I drop to the ground with a thump like a dusty sack of potatoes, losing my grip on the knife. Air leaves my lungs. My back and butt are screaming at the impact.
Through the groaning pain, I roll onto my side, scooping myself off the ground, unsteadily rising on all fours. My abused body is screaming at me, joining my bruised mind. Neither is happy with me right now.
My little knife lies in the dust, not far from me, so I dive towards it as fast as I can manage. I close my hand over the handle with a relief, pushing myself up, off the ground once more. My mind is whispering warnings to me, wondering how it is that I’ve been allowed to have my knife and my freedom to move, but the animal instinct inside drains all the cautions with the blind adrenaline of survival.
I sway unsteadily, rubbing at my blind eyes to dislodge the scratching mix of tears and dirt as I spin to face my attacker, holding my little knife in front me.
A male in front of me is taking a shape.
Angel wings are spread behind him and with every new angry blink, I see more of him. My mouth drops when I can finally make out his face.
Rafe.
He is not wearing his usual glasses, and it takes me a while to recognise him. He stands in front of me, waiting, not rushing at me. The cautious gaze of his soft, brown eyes is on me.
His four wide open, large vivid-purple angel wings are a stunning backdrop for his all-black modern military grade tactical gear. He’s sealed in it from head to toe. Black laced up combat boots, trousers with pockets and ammunition belts strapped to his thighs. Black, high tech, plastic armour covers his body. The wide belt around his waist houses large, curved and ridged knives, leather pockets, a metal ball with spikes, a small axe, and some more weapons, for which I don’t even have a name.
Two large sword hilts rise behind each shoulder. The leather harnesses criss-cross over his chest.
I gulp at all this gear. No way can I outfight all of that, but I’m not planning to let him see that. I steady my arm with a knife at him, thrusting it towards him with a shaky hand.
I feel so weak. The smell still hangs thick around us and every few minutes the gruesome orchestral screams come back to life.
“What are you doing here?” I croak. Dust is crunching on my teeth.
“I came to get you.” He lifts his arms up, showing that he’s not planning to fight me, but I notice his muscles tensing on his neck as he moves his arms. The blood slowly soaks the sleeve on his shirt and a clear cut in the fabric shows the wound from my knife.
“Who says I’m going anywhere with you?” I challenge him, refusing to lower the knife.
“I hope you will. It’s not safe for you down here, and I can protect you”, he answers, gazing at me.
And the next second, another tidal wave of screams blankets the air, igniting the white light of the ‘lighthouse’.
Despair washes over me. Their cries demand to be heard and I can’t speak, listening to them, to their pain. I want to clap my hands over my ears but there’s no way I’ll risk lowering my knife on him.
Despair is birthing the rage in me. She’s happy to be back, asking what she has missed and offering to jump straight in.
“Oh, another protector!” I retort, when the wave of screams dies down. The sarcasm seeping out me is of the highest grade. “Everyone is keen to protect me nowadays. Only then I’m worse off than I was to begin with. So how ‘bout you get back to wherever you came from, and I’ll get back to my life and we pretend that we never met.”
I keep my gaze on Rafe, refusing to move or even to lose ground.
“Ariel, I can’t do that.” His voice is soft and calm, like talking to a wounded animal. His sincere eyes gaze at me.
“Sure you can. Easy. I’ll show you. You go that way”, I jerk my chin behind his back, “and I’ll go this way”, I nod my head behind me.
He doesn’t say a word, just keeps watching me and I watch him, waiting for his next move, which doesn’t come. We just stand there, staring each other down, not moving, frozen in our delicate status-quo.
This is just getting ridiculous!
“Tabby! Tabby!” I yell into the wilderness while keeping my eyes fixed on Rafe. I want to know where she is and that she’s safe.
“Tabby can’t join us right now”.
I spin away from Rafe, towards the newcomer’s voice. The knife spins its trajectory with me in my outstretched hand.
My heart sinks at the sight of the Butcher in his black leather tunic, with the familiar whip at the belt and his large, curved axe in his hand. Two of his goons are behind him, their weapons drawn. Butcher’s menacing side smile is scary as hell. Involuntarily, I swallow.
“What are you doing here, Ariel?” Butcher speaks with a strange vowel rolling accent. “Baza wanted you to stay with us.” He shakes his head, softly clacking his tongue at me.
“I don’t care what Baza wants”, I yell over the new wave of screams, forcing my eyes to stay open and my hand to remain steady.
Suddenly Rafe’s body slams into mine from behind. His strong hands are on my waist and in a split second I’m lifted and somehow now behind his back, staring at his purple feathers in front of my nose. One of his scabbards is empty and the sound of weapons colliding and a vibration of the impact rolls off his body, pushing at me through the ground.
Rafe widens his stance in front of me. His legs move with each opponent’s offence, his sword slicing the air.
I take a small step back.
While they’re preoccupied with each other, I decided, it’s the perfect time for me to do a runner. I don’t want either of them to win. The best outcome for me would be for them to kill each other and die together in each other’s arms.
I take another step back, turn and sprint away from them.
Or so I imagine.
It’s more of a limp and a hop. Guttural voices shout behind, noticing me, and that kicks me into action, pushes me forward.
The rush of footsteps behind my back is getting closer. I allow myself a glance over my shoulder, only to see both goons after me, and Rafe, glancing in my direction while fighting off Butcher.
The goons are behind me, I can hear the creaking of their leather tunics and almost feel them with the back of my neck. A large hand is reaching for me and before it has a chance to close around my arm, I turn, yanking my arm out of its grip, losing my footing in the process and I go flying.
I fall with a thud, sliding on my side, shredding my face on the rocks and stones on the ground. My arms are outstretched, trying to stop the grinding slide, whilst protecting my face.
My flight stops and I feel the goons above me. Almost on me. I grind my teeth, readying for more pain and the fight that I’ll give them, no matter what.
As fast as I can, ignoring the screaming pain of the shredded skin on my face and arms, I flip on my back, kicking my legs at the nearest one.
My foot lands in his knee but that doesn’t do as much damage as I hoped for, it just angers him. He stretches his arms to me, ready to lock them around my throat. I pause just for a second more and land a precise kick in his groin.
The goon cries out, moans and doubles over, falling sideways to the ground in slow motion. He rocks on the ground, nursing his family jewels, while swearing in a strangled whisper, cursing me and moaning in between.
But I don’t have the luxury to admire my handiwork any longer, as the other goon jumps on me and wrestles me to the ground, pulling me under him. He straddles me, sitting on top of my chest, pushing me down with his weight, and I struggle to expand my ribcage to breathe.
He swings his arm back and slaps me on the face –hard.
My head whips back, hitting the ground. I can taste the iron flavour of blood in my mouth. His slap is so hard that my ears are ringing, as if I had stuck my head in a church bell and somebody rung it.
I can smell his sweat and the stench of his breath and this, combined with his weight on top of me, is making me sick with panic. I am trying to swing my fists at him, but all that I hit is empty air.
His hand vices over mine, while the other hand dives into my hair, pulling my hair out, yanking me up off the ground with him. I cry out in pain, tears fill my eyes and I start to rise, lifting my upper body, following the vicious hand, wanting to relieve the pain.
Suddenly I’m released.
Unsupported, my body flops back on the ground, head hitting the ground again and I groan, as angry red dots spin in front of my eyes.
Rafe’s furious face fills my vision. His usually soft brown eyes are black and stormy now. He is heaving. A bleeding wound cuts across his bottom lip.
He kneels next to me, both his swords back in their scabbards behind his back.
I throw my fist towards his face, hoping to make contact, but he sharply jerks his head to the side, avoiding my punch.
My other hand shoots out, aiming at his head, but it fails as it hits the empty air. He moves and swings his head with lightning speed, ducking, avoiding my every hit. Unable to get myself free, I push my legs at the ground, desperate to get away from him, to get some distance between us.
But the next second, his arms shoot out, grabbing my wrists, pinning them to my sides as he leans in. His angry face is uncomfortably close to mine.
The familiar scent of crispy ocean air and the salty wind tickles my nose, but today it’s somewhat heavier, stormier, mixed in with his sweat. But in spite of that, his scent relaxes my muscles against my will, melting my spine and that makes me even angrier, as I thrash in his hold.
“Please calm yourself down and stop struggling”, he barks at me. “I don’t want to hurt you even by accident.”
His face is an inch from mine and I can see a little white scar on his left cheek and something familiar tugs at the back of my mind, at my memory, but it’s elusive and faint and I can’t seem to catch it. But that’s just ridiculous, why would it be familiar to me? I only met him a few days ago.
I thrash, struggling to free my arms or get myself away from him, away from his hold.
“Please let me go.” I stop thrashing and plead, looking into his eyes, and I think he knows that it’s not only the wrists I’m talking about.
“I will. I promise, but not just yet”, he replies, keeping his voice calm and even. “I can’t afford to leave you defenceless against our world again, and you’re not ready to face all of what you are. I was hoping to break it to you carefully, but it seems that time for a gentle induction is over.”
And as I keep staring at him he continues. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I swear to you that I’ll never harm you, you are too vital to me. I’m very sorry that I can’t let you go now and that I have to take you with me against your will, but that’s the only way I can keep you safe”, he murmurs, leaning in even closer.
“Please, Rafe. I need to get out, to get to my sister. Baza’s already sent after her”, I whisper. “He’s going to hurt her to get to me. Please”, I breathe out.
“I sent my-”, he pointedly looks at me, “our kyriotes to ensure her safety the day you disappeared. They’re watching over her. She remains in your realm and absolutely safe, but I can’t say the same about you. And I can’t risk any more of these unexpected and dangerous situations. I’m very sorry.” His voice is soft, hiding the steel underneath.
I can hear that he’ll not be swayed.
His thumb is lazily stroking my wrist, drawing warm circles on my skin. My traitorous body relaxes around him, it trusts him. I don’t understand the effect he has on me, how I’m losing control over my body around him, and I don’t like it. I hate that, my weak body and him.
His lingering gaze travels down from my eyes, to my lips. It stays there for a bit before it slides, falling to my neck.
I squirm and shift under his gaze, tucking my chin to my chest, a pathetic way to protect myself, to hide my neck.
His eyebrows draw together as his puzzled gaze locks on my neck. He lets go of my wrists, reaching to my neck.
Discomfort and exposure are now replaced by the fresh waves of panic. I pull my head back, straining the tendons on my neck, away from his reach.
“Where did you get that necklace?” he asks calmly, although the stormy emotions behind his eyes are anything but calm.
“Baza gave it to me”, I squeak in a weak voice, like a schoolgirl who forgot her homework and has been pulled up on that.
“That’s how he found you”, he barks out. “How could you take anything from him? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have a drop of sense in you? How anyone can be that naïve?” he reprimands me, his eyes stormy once more.
He closes his eyes for a second, exhales and once he opens them, I can see calmer waves behind his eyes.
“You have to leave this necklace here”, he orders. I weakly nod.
Rafe reaches around my neck, unclips the necklace and then hurls the expensive diamond far into the dusty horizon.
The moment of quiet raptures again with a new wave of screams and I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my head into my shoulders. I want to slap my hands over my ears, but my wrists are still caged by the iron grip of his hands.
Rafe releases my wrists, threads one arm behind my back and the other under my knees and in a swift and fluid move stands up with me in his arms. My eyes fly open and I can see his purple wings, wide-spread, all four illuminated from within, changing colour from purple to the darkest and lightest blues, before turning a sublime iridescent white, so bright and pure that I have to slam my eyes shut again.
Finally I can clap my hands over my ears, dimming the screams around me.