Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1)

by Rasmussen, Jen

  There were answering shouts from above, then footsteps on the stairs, first going up, then coming down. More than one person. Thea was closer to the third door now. She might not make it to the last room she’d been in. There was no time to dither. Ignoring the protests of her bad leg, she darted to the door of the third room and turned the handle, praying it was unlocked.

  It was.

  Thea closed the door as softly as she could and leaned against the wall, where she would be behind the door if somebody opened it. She breathed slowly, silently.

  But someone else was in the room, taking no trouble to breathe quietly. In fact, they sounded like they were snoring.

  The overhead lights were off, and Thea didn’t dare turn them on for fear of calling attention to herself. The ground level window looked out onto a dull lawn on a rainy day. But as Thea’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could see somebody on the bed. She stepped forward, thanking the Lord for the silent feet of a fury, a talent she just seemed to have grown with her blood and her wings.

  She caught her breath at the sight of golden yellow hair on the pillow. Thea pulled back the sheet and rolled the sleeping form gently over to face her.

  “Flannery!”

  Flannery blinked slowly awake, but there was no recognition in her eyes. Thea supposed that was understandable. She’d changed quite a bit since they’d last seen one another.

  “It’s okay,” Thea whispered. “It’s me.”

  “Thea? You’re one of them. When—”

  “Shh. It’s okay,” Thea said again. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “But I can’t…” Flannery rubbed her temples, and Thea was glad to see she wasn’t cuffed or restrained. “I’m not supposed to…”

  “I’ll help you. I’m going to take you home.”

  “Home.”

  While she disconnected the various bands and wires that connected Flannery to her machines, Thea kept saying soothing things about the farm, Aunt Bridget, Pete, trying to rouse her cousin. She looked like she’d gone through the same experiments Thea had for ten times as long, which was probably exactly the case, and Thea wondered if the real Flannery was even in there anymore.

  But eventually Flannery seemed to get it. “Push the blue button.” She raised a shaky hand and pointed. “That one there, on the big machine. That’s the one they hit when the test is over, to send the data to their computers. If you hit it the system won’t know you interrupted a test in the middle and there won’t be an alarm.”

  “Good idea,” Thea said. “I’m glad you’re thinking straight.”

  Flannery nodded at the neck band in Thea’s hand. “Once I’m disconnected from that, it’s easier to think.” She sat up, swayed, then leaned against the wall. “I need a minute before I can walk, Dora.”

  Thea’s throat closed at the nickname, almost forgotten, from when they were small. Dora, short for Theadora, and Flora, not really short for Flannery, but close enough for someone who hated her name. They used to pretend to be twin sisters, until the sibling rivalry became a little too real.

  “That’s okay.” Thea managed to speak without her voice cracking. “You’ll be resting for real in your own bed soon.”

  “How’s my mother? How’s Pete?”

  And just like that, old affection gave way to old resentment. In conversation with Thea, Flannery always referred to Aunt Bridget as my mother. Never Mama, which was what she called her, or just plain Mom. My mother. Thea was surprised she hadn’t said my Pete while she was at it.

  She scolded herself for her pettiness and said, “Your mother is worried sick, of course. And not just about you. They arrested Pete.”

  For the first time since she’d woken up, Flannery showed some emotion: first shock, then anger. “Why would they arrest Pete? They prom— What evidence did they have?”

  “Blood in his car. Yours.” Thea started to pull Flannery up. “Come on, I’ll carry you. I know you’re sick, but we don’t have any time. If we’re lucky, they think I got out and they’re looking outside for me right now, but it won’t be long before someone comes back down here.”

  “No,” Flannery agreed. “It won’t.”

  As if on cue, footsteps and voices sounded in the hall outside.

  Thea stared at her cousin.

  “I’m afraid I lied about what that blue button does,” Flannery said. “I really am sorry, but I had to call them. You’ll get me fired.”

  “Fired?”

  The door swung open and two security guards came in, Dr. Forrester at their heels.

  Everything happened fast after that.

  Thea flew to the other side of the room as the security guards advanced on her.

  “Flannery!”

  But Dr. Forrester was already ushering Flannery out of the room. Flannery shot Thea one look that seemed genuinely guilty, and then she was gone.

  On the bright side, that left only two for Thea to fight. One of the guards had a baton, and the other what looked like a small taser. She protracted her claws as they came at her, one on each side.

  No guns meant they didn’t want to hurt her too badly. Of course. She was the only hex resistant fury they had. That was an advantage she could exploit.

  The one with the baton was saying something, but Thea was focused on the one with the taser. She could sense his virtues. Honor. Compassion.

  He wouldn’t like hurting a woman.

  Thea moved forward, deliberately swiping wide with her claws, allowing the guard to get a jab in with the taser. She jumped back in a split second, but it was long enough for her cry of pain to be mostly real as she collapsed to the floor. She hung her head and wailed.

  The taser-guard, exactly as she’d foreseen, got on his knees in front of her and touched her shoulder.

  Thea swiped forward again and raked her claws across his torso. Not deep enough to put him in mortal danger, but enough to draw a frightening amount of blood.

  The stick-guard swung, but Thea batted him to the floor with her wing. As she rolled out of his line of sight, he got a good look at his partner, then swore and scrambled over to help him.

  Thea figured she had three, maybe four seconds of confusion before they, or at least the uninjured one, came after her again. Running all the way through the building—a building she didn’t know—seemed like a bad option. The basement window was long, but it was narrow. Thea sized it up in the space of half a second. Thanks to years of being red-carpet-ready for Baird, she was still pretty damn thin. And her wings proved to be more flexible than she’d expected them to be. If she plastered them against her back, she thought she could make it.

  Knowing that the only way it would work was without hesitation, Thea jumped. Stick-guard grabbed her ankle, but his hand was slick with his coworker’s blood, and she pulled out of his grip with no pause at all. Arms forward, fists clenched, she flew into the window with all the force she could muster, then as she felt the glass give way, flattened her wings to squeeze through.

  The window didn’t shatter as she’d feared it would, but instead cracked in a spiderweb pattern, like a car’s windshield, and popped out in more-or-less one piece. The jagged and splintered wooden frame stabbed at her wings, then her thighs, as she wriggled through, but it could have been a lot worse.

  Thea rolled out onto wet grass, opened her wings, and flew.

  From above, she saw that the building she’d been imprisoned in was only a large house, in a wealthy-looking residential neighborhood. She headed for the nearest tree cover, which turned out to be a park, and perched in a pin oak to catch her breath. She knew she couldn’t stay long. The question was where to go next.

  She should have been able to fly back to Hexing House at an untrackable speed, the way she’d flown back from her exam. Unfortunately, the brief flight from the house had shown her that flying would be problematic. She’d wobbled drunkenly in the air, and tired quickly. The latter might have just been the result of days of being hexed, but a quick survey of her damaged w
ings showed the reason for the former: the left one had a bleeding tear in it, not quite covered by a tattered flap of skin.

  But maybe the fact that furies usually could rush home like that would work in her favor. They might assume she’d gone back and not chase her at all.

  As she considered this, Thea realized that even if she could make it to Hexing House, it would be a stupid move. If Graves wasn’t running the lab he was at least heavily involved, but either way he wasn’t working alone. She already knew Hester had been part of it, and she distinctly remembered Dr. Forrester saying that most of their staff was human.

  She had unknown enemies in the colony, and she was already wounded.

  But if she wasn’t going back, she needed to get under cover. There was a good chance someone would send out a search party, and that some of that pursuit would be aerial.

  Without direction, flying erratically with her wounded wing, Thea set off again, circling the area around the lab in a wider and wider radius until she found the river. She followed it first north, then south, hoping she’d see something she recognized. Eventually she did: where the Prescott River was at its widest and laziest, there was a long stretch of forest at its side, popular among hunters and fishermen. Pete’s family had a small cottage there.

  The hunting cabins scattered around the area were mostly alike, and it took Thea a while to find the right one. But when she did, she was sure. She’d forgotten the battered old lobster crate and buoy that hung incongruously from the porch roof. Pete’s mother had New England roots, and despite being three generations and a thousand miles removed from them, she liked to remember.

  Thea had spent time here as a teenager. It didn’t take her long to orient herself, and remember which knotted hole in which oak tree held the spare key. She happened to look up after she retrieved it, and saw something that chilled her blood: furies, flying overhead.

  She dropped to the ground, but slowly, so as not to catch their eye, and rolled inch by inch into the bushes beside the cottage. She stayed there for half an hour after they passed, but even then she didn’t trust it. Maybe they’d seen her and were just surrounding her, or going back for reinforcements. She should leave again.

  But that turned out to be out of the question. Her wounded wing had gotten stiff while she was lying there, and almost as soon as she got in the air there was a shooting, tingling pain that went straight through her shoulder and down her spine. The wing faltered and Thea fell, narrowly missing the oak she’d just gotten Pete’s key from.

  Had a nerve or muscle or something been damaged, in addition to the cut? She hadn’t had a chance to learn much about the inner workings of her new body, but one thing was clear: she would have to rest here for a while.

  “One bum wing, one bum leg, and no shoes,” Thea muttered as she hobbled up the porch steps. Now that the adrenaline strength that had fueled her escape was wearing off, her whole body ached from the fight with the guards, and she had a feeling she’d be weak and exhausted from the experiments for days to come. Maybe even weeks. “How the hell am I going to get out of this?”

  The air inside the cabin was stale, smelling vaguely of pine and fish. They hadn’t been up here for a while. Thea opened a window, not only for the fresh air, but to more easily hear any sounds outside. Then she went into the kitchen, took a long drink of water, and found a couple of cans of soup that hadn’t expired. She ate one of these cold while she considered what to do. Did furies heal faster than humans? She didn’t know, and she was too tired to try to figure anything out.

  The mattresses had no sheets or pillows, but it felt lovely to stretch out her sore body on a bed she wasn’t chained to. Despite her fears and her disappointments, Thea was asleep within minutes.

  When she woke up it was early evening, judging from the sky, and she felt refreshed, if not well. She decided to test her wings. Maybe if she only flew short distances, with rests in between, she could get somewhere faster than going on her bare feet.

  But get where? Surely they would think to look at the farm, if she went to Aunt Bridget. Same with the apartment that had nominally been her home, and that was hundreds of miles away in any case. She’d never make it that far.

  One step at a time. See if you can go at all, before you decide where.

  She emerged from the cabin to find Flannery leaning against the porch railing with her arms crossed. Thea thought the leaning was due to more than just an attempt to look casual. Flannery looked pale and shaky. If it came to a fight, Thea thought that despite her own weakness, she could probably take her cousin down.

  Thea’s claws came out of their own accord, but she waited. Maybe Flannery had come to explain. To beg for forgiveness.

  “Heard you moving around in there,” Flannery said. “Thought you furies were supposed to be sneaky?”

  So much for that. Thea wasn’t really surprised. Flannery was always at her nastiest when she was feeling guilty and defensive.

  “They let you out, I see,” Thea said.

  “I’m not a prisoner. I’m an employee. I’m free to come and go as I please.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. That might be what they told you, but they’re not going to want to just let you go with everything you know.”

  Flannery ignored this. “I told them I could find you, and I was right. I knew you wouldn’t risk going to my house. But I figured you would run to Pete. It’s just like you.”

  “Pete isn’t here.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, then? Now you whistle for them to come swooping in and take me away?”

  “Something like that.”

  But she didn’t make any move. The two women regarded each other for a few seconds before Thea said, “Why would you do this, Flannery? Any of it? Did you even think about what it would do to Aunt Bridget?”

  “Of course I did,” Flannery snapped. “But I thought it would be worth it, in the end. A few weeks of worry seemed a fair trade for a comfortable retirement. I’ll be able to take care of all of us, with all the money they’re paying me.” She shrugged. “I wish I could offer you a more interesting reason, but I’m afraid I really am just that easily bought. I’m sick of worrying about money. And I’m sick of waiting to get married because we can’t afford it. Do you know how long Pete and I have been together?”

  Since the day I let you have him. “Of course I know.”

  “Well, then.” Flannery made a gesture that encompassed Thea from top to bottom. “We don’t all get to have it easy like you. We don’t all want to run out to Hollywood and get our pictures taken in our underwear. Some of us need to scrape by in the real world.”

  “You could have called me any time,” Thea said. “I would have given you all the money you wanted.”

  Thea wasn’t expecting it when Flannery came rushing at her, and Flannery easily tackled her to the porch floor, knocking the wind out of her.

  “I don’t want your charity! I don’t want your whore money!”

  Flannery had always been a crappy fighter. Physically, anyway. And with the two of them so feeble, limply slapping at one another with neither strength nor speed, the whole thing was almost funny.

  “I don’t want anything from you!” Flannery shouted. “You think you’re so much better than me, but you turned out to be nothing but a slut!”

  Thea got her breath back and pushed Flannery off, almost gently.

  Flannery jumped up and pulled out a gun.

  Thea didn’t even have time to be surprised. Flannery raised the gun, took aim. Thea flapped her wings and surged upward. In a split second she’d reached Flannery and lashed out with a clawed hand.

  Flannery never got a chance to fire. Thea’s claws raked her arm and then, slipping as Flannery fell away, her belly as well. Thea never knew whether her cousin would have shot her or not.

  But she had a haunting feeling that, just as her claws were sinking in and it was too late to stop them, Flannery’s finger froze, and there was hesita
tion in her eyes.

  Thea crouched in one of the peach trees, much as Graves had the night she came into the orchard looking for a purple dragon. Now she was the purple dragon. Flannery was unconscious and bleeding. Thea had balanced her awkwardly between two branches, and gripped her shoulder tightly to hold her in place.

  It had been an enormous effort, getting her even these few miles to Aunt Bridget’s with Thea’s wounded wing. But there was no phone in Pete’s cottage. No place else for Thea to go.

  And when she got here, she’d found one fury flying around, and two humans wandering the fields with flashlights.

  Once she’d had a chance to rest, Thea picked Flannery back up and darted from tree to tree. Avoiding the humans would be easy, but she didn’t know how many furies might be watching from above. Eventually she decided that Flannery was losing too much blood, and she had to just risk it. She went through the barn and out the other side, then hurried around to Aunt Bridget’s kitchen door. It was locked. That was unusual. She raised a hand to knock.

  “You can stop right there.”

  Thea turned and found her aunt holding a shotgun.

  Bridget took a step forward, then froze again when she saw who was in Thea’s arms. She started to cry out, then lifted the gun again, aiming it at Thea’s face.

  “You let her go.”

  “Aunt Bridget. It’s me.”

  Bridget dropped the shotgun on her own foot. Thankfully, it didn’t go off. “Thea? I didn’t even… you look so…”

  “Let me inside, Aunt Bridget. It’s not safe out here.”

  Aunt Bridget roused herself from her shock and opened the door. Once inside, Thea put Flannery down on the kitchen table and Aunt Bridget rushed to see where the bleeding was coming from.

  “What happened to her? Who did this?”

  Thea avoided the second question. “She was clawed. I don’t think the wounds are deep enough to have hit anything major, but she’s lost a lot of blood.”