by Mason Sabre
"You requested to meet with me?" he asked, his voice a deep caress in her head. He didn't sit, but he kept himself back and tried to look at least relaxed. She supposed he was used to the way his body made people feel a little intimidated.
“My husband, James … he saw your broadcast.”
“Yes.”
She bit on her lip, not sure what to say. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. They were meant to arrive together, not sick, not asleep. James had been the one to want to come. James had been the one with the idea, and while she had agreed with him, she hadn’t thought much farther ahead than that. Maybe if he hadn't got sick, she might have come up with ideas what the place would be like, and what the Prisoner would look like.
“We came from Newport.”
“Newport? That’s a good week’s trek from here.”
A week? Had she lost three days? She’d find out later. “Yes. I … Some kids got tagged. One of them died.”
“And you seek protection?”
Protection? No. That wasn’t what it was. They weren’t afraid. Not in that way. They were afraid. Only a fool wouldn’t be concerned with all that was going on, but that wasn’t why they had travelled. “My name is Diana. I am a …” she blew out a breath. Half-breed was a swear word on any side of the coin. Like a genetic betrayal before birth.
“A half-breed. Half angel?”
"Yes." She waited for that look on his face, the one that said they had no place here. Few places accepted half breeds. Although in Exile they were a lot more tolerant than the mainlands.
“My job Diana, is to keep everyone safe. I am not a leader. I am not the boss. People will look to me for guidance, and perhaps I have it, perhaps I don’t. It is not my job to protect you, but to enable that within these walls. You will find what you need. But it is not a free ride, either, and it is not an easy one. The Humans look for us, and I am sure, one day, maybe soon, they will find us. I want a better world for my children. I want a world where they are free to be who they are without fear of execution or slaughter.”
“You want peace?”
He cocked a brow. “Yes, but it will not be easy. The Humans will not bow down and give it.” He nodded towards Nigel. “Let her out. There is a bathroom if you would like to freshen up, and then you can come and join my wife and me. I have already spoken to your husband and the young man you were travelling with.”
He left then, not saying so much to her. She watched him walk out of the building and caught sight of the little boy bouncing at the doors. He'd not gone anywhere it would seem. The Prisoner bent and held his arms out and let the little boy straddle his hip as he carried him away. Must have been his son, she could only assume … except for the eyes. That boy didn't have shifter eyes. No. They were … she hated to say it, demonic.
The bathroom was another small building. It smelt of paint and wood, and it reminded her of stories from when she was a child, of outside plumbing. This was a big purpose-built outdoor bathroom, with three toilets, two rooms that held baths, and a shower room. There was a line of sinks too. They didn’t match, but someone had fitted them in and got them working.
She looked like shit. Her hair was a greasy mess. She’d need more than five minutes in the bathroom to freshen up and feel normal again. Hell, she’d need a whole week in the bath to soak away all the travelling, but she did the best she could. Running her fingers through her hair and giving her face a wash, she made herself as presentable as possible. It was better, not perfect, but better.
Outside, it was a town that met with a construction site, and they were on a hill … one of the mountains, she could only assume. The land tilted at a harsh angle and Nigel waited for her outside the bathroom and then led her up the incline, towards the house was at the top. An old farmhouse from what she could see. "You all built this place?"
Nigel looked back, down the hill to the houses. Small houses. Some of them nothing more than straight rectangular boxes, with a door and a window. “Most of it, yes. This way.”
There was a fence all the way around the place, and at specific points, there were platforms where people stood and watched. Even the house at the top seemed to have platforms added to the edge of the roof. People were sitting there. Keeping watch. She supposed they could see for miles from up there. They could see if anyone was coming their way.
The man with the patch across his eye was outside the house, leaning against one pillar that held the roof above the porch. He was drinking something, coffee she guessed, and he was reading a book. He paused only to glance at her and greet Nigel.
“This way,” Nigel said, and he pushed open the big door at the front of the house.
It was a farmhouse. Probably had a working farm with animals in the fields all around the place. "James …" she said when she was shown to a room. She raced to him, arms going around his neck in sweet relief he was fine. "God, James." He held onto her with the same fury. "Are you okay?" she leant back, hands on the edge of his face looking at him. The lines were gone. He had colour back in those cheeks of his, and his leg was in a cast.
“I’m okay.” He lifted his hand to show her the cannula in the back, and the bag of something going into it. He squeezed the back of her neck, giving her a reassuring hold, and she thanked him for that in her head.
James looked more like himself, and unlike her, he had had a shower or at least a wash. His hair was soft, and he smelt like lemon and soap. She was about to ask him how long he had been awake when the man came in. This time, though. He wasn't alone. A woman came in with him, and she was holding a sleeping baby.
“This is my wife,” he said to Diana. “Your husband has already met her. Please, sit.”
The man motioned for Diana and James to sit on the sofa behind them. James sat first, and Nigel helped him to move the bar holding his drip bag so it could rest behind him. She perched on the end. She couldn’t help it. James might be relaxed a little, but he’d had however long it was to get to know them.
The woman behind him sat on the opposite sofa. She was tired looking, like she needed a good rest, but damn, she looked great for having such a young baby.
The girl with the pigtails came in. She had hold of a baby too, and she looked so very different, and then Diana realised as the girl gave the woman the baby, she had twins.
“How old?” Diana asked.
“Seven months,” the woman said.
“You’re …” she snapped her mouth shut, her stomach rolling at the insult she almost threw out to the woman … to the Prisoner’s wife.
“My wife is Human?”
“Yes.” A weak reply.
“She is. She also helped your husband.”
“I got most of the toxins out of his system. That’s just fluids. It should help to flush everything out for him. He said you found some antibiotics.” She offered a warm smile, and it almost calmed Diana enough. “You saved his life, you know? With those antibiotics. If he’d been shifter, he’d be dead by now, but being he isn’t, he’d have died, but not the same. He’s a lucky man.”
James squeezed Diana's knee, and her heart leapt at his touch, but it had already twisted at the idea she might have lost him. She'd have not survived that. Not ever.
The man perched himself on the coffee table in front of Diana. He made it that his knees were either side of hers, but not touching. “My name is Nick. That is Helena, and those two she is holding are Nakita and Toke. The young boy hiding behind you.”
Diana jumped and peered. She hadn’t noticed the little red-eyed boy there. Or heard him.
“That’s Aiden. These four people are the most important people to me in the world, and I will do whatever it takes to protect them. “
She nodded.
“That means I need to see if you’re a threat. Now you can tell me you aren’t and make all the promises in the world to me, but that doesn’t matter. People lie. People hide their true intent. So, this is your one chance, you won’t get another. If your intentions towards us, or an
yone else here is of malice, leave. You can walk out of here right now. No one will follow you. No one will harm you. but if you stay, and I find you are lying …”
Helena cleared her throat and Diana could swear she saw the edges of his lips curl up in a smile, but it was gone again.
“You get what I am saying?”
“Yes. I … we. We came here because we saw your broadcast. We thought … I don’t know what we thought.”
“Everyone is choosing sides,” James cut in. “Too many die.”
“Too many always die,” Nick said. He held his hand out to Diana, resting it on his knee. “Your choice. Take my hand or up and leave. This is your one free pass.”
She looked at James, and he nodded at her. She wanted to ask if he had done this, but the ease in which he sat there, told her he must have. And she would do whatever it was he had done. Not because she was weak, or the doting wife who did what her husband wanted, but because she trusted him. She trusted him with every beat of her heart.
“Okay,” she said, and then she reached out and took Nick’s hand, and just as fast as she had, he stood, and pulled her up.
It took her a second to realise she was standing. She’d not felt him pull her or lift her, or whatever he had done, to get her to where she was. They were standing near the door, her hand still in his. She went to let go, but he grasped her fingers tighter.
“Don’t,” he said. “If you let go, you die.”
“What?”
He motioned to look behind her. She was still sitting on the sofa, and he was still sitting on the table. She had her hand in his. James was sitting still with her, and Helena held the babies just as she had a second ago, yet she wasn’t there with them. She was on the other side of the room.
"What … Am I …" she glanced up at Nick.
“You’re not dead. I see souls, Diana. That is what I am. That is what I do. Do you trust me?”
She wanted to say no. That part of her brain that still worked with some logical thought tried to remind her that this man was a stranger. He was a big, shifting stranger who could rip her and her husband to pieces in seconds, but there was a calm to him. An ease in which he moved, and it came off him and seeped into her. “Yes,” she found herself saying. “Yes, I do.”
"Then close your eyes and let me in." One second she was holding his hand and the next moment he had both hands on the side of her head. Her eyes grew droopy with it. The lids on them grew so heavy, and there was a light in her head, probing, invading. Like a spark that seemed to grow with every moment, and she let it. She allowed it push against her and become so big until it spread through her body.
Images flashed through her head. Images of so many things she had forgotten. The room, the cage where she had been kept when she was younger. She wept with it, sobbed and tried to pull herself away, but Nick held onto her and made her hold on to him.
"Shush …" he soothed as he pushed her into it. Forced her into that moment her wings had been clipped. She'd always thought they'd been clipped when she was a baby when she was too young to know any better. That was what her father had told her, but no. She'd shut it away, hadn't she? She saw herself, perhaps five or six, playing. Then a man came, a large man who she recognised from the lab. Except she wasn't in a garden or anything like that. No, she was in a room … in a room with other children, and she had a chain around her leg. He walked in, no words, no warning, and grabbed her wing and snapped it. The girl ... her, Diana, screamed from the agony, as he held her and took the other wing and snapped it too, right in the same place, in the part where they clip them to take out the powers. All spark and light poured from the wounds, and she fell to her knees, a weeping, screaming mess on the floor.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself pressed into Nick’s chest and her face was wet. He smoothed a hand down her spine, brushed back her hair, and held her there as she wept for the girl she had forgotten.
Her wings draped behind her, massive, feathered beasts that came from her back. He ran his hand along them, touched every feather of her body. Electricity rode them, but it didn’t hurt. Not like when they had been snapped.
"Wake," he said. And she did. Like a flash in her mind that snapped her away from where they had stood to back at the sofa.
She could still feel him holding her. His strong arms around her body, his firm chest against her face and her wings … God, her wings. They had spanned out again and stretched wide. The mud was all gone.
“Are they … did …”
Nick nodded. The woman with the pigtails smiled. “Fixed.”
“How …oh, God ...” she couldn’t hold the tears in her eyes and her lip trembled with it. Never. Never had she even imagined what it would feel like to have her wingspan. That was enough for her. It was more than enough, but the energy in them. Like a tap had been turned on and she was filling up.
“Welcome,” Nick said. “To The Forgotten.”
The End
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Also by Mason Sabre
Society Books
Book 1 Cade
Book 2 Dark Veil
Book 3 Hidden
Book 4 Exile
Book 5 Fractured Part One
Book 6 Fractured Part Two
Book 7 Broken
Book 8 The Forgotten
Society Companion Books
Henry
The Rise of the Phoenix
Death Awakening
Broken Snow
Seraph
Bleed
Chaos
Martial Magic
Enigma
Mortal Wings
Other Books by Mason Sabre
Death Dealers (With Rachel Morton)
Dead on Time
Dead on Arrival
Others
Watch Over you
Cuts Like an Angel
Cuts like an Angel 2
Cuts Like an Angel 3
Lucy
She Promised
Skin Trade
Non-Fiction
10,000 Words per Day
Write Better Scenes
Patreon for Writers
Dedications
Every book is because of you guys!
Thank You
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You all rock!!!
