The Need

by Bilinda Ni Siodacain

  What the hell is going on, he thought to himself.

  Jon watched as the door at the opposite end of the room swung noisily open. The man stood framed by the light from the hall. Fear fizzled through Jon’s veins. Something seemed very familiar about this man, familiar and wrong.

  “You’re awake I see. Looks like they did no lasting damage to you after all. It’s almost a pity.” His cold voice crept into the room, drifting over everything in its path. The moment it reached Jon goose bumps sprouted across his skin and his blood grew sluggish in his veins. It was as though the very sound of this man’s voice replaced his blood with ice water that pumped slowly around his body.

  “Why am I here? Who are you?” Jon’s voice was shaky as he spoke and he hated himself for it. Whatever was going on the last thing he wanted to do was appear weak in front of this lunatic.

  The second the man stepped into the light Jon knew he didn’t need to hear his answer. Everything slipped back into place in his head and a shudder of pure terror drifted through him. If he was here then where the hell was Aisling?

  Max’s yellow eyes bored holes into Jon. “You don’t remember me? I find that hard to believe Jonathon.”

  “Where is she you bastard?” Panic filled Jon. What if they had hurt her or worse? He shook the thought from his head. If she was dead he would feel it. They had always had a connection. One that ran deep inside them. If Aisling had perished at their hands then he would feel it.

  “I’m afraid we didn’t have the pleasure of Aisling joining us.” A look of pure hatred crossed Max’s face before he once more replaced it with a sneering smile. “We do however, have you.”

  “What are these marks on my skin?” Jon struggled against his restraints as he spoke.

  “Oh those. Well we couldn’t have you escaping and using your power to hurt or maybe even kill us. So we used binding runes on your skin. It stops you from using any of your pesky powers.”

  Jon flopped back against the wall. It was useless. No amount of struggling against the chains would free him and his power was well and truly bound. Whatever Max had planned for him there was nothing Jon could do right now to stop it.

  “What do you want then?” Jon sighed as he spoke.

  “You haven’t given up have you Jonathon? Oh how disappointing that would be. I was expecting more from you.” Max shook his head and pretended to tut with disappointment.

  “Don’t treat me like a fool you prick! You know very well there is nothing I can do right now! But give me half a chance and I swear so help me God that I will kill you all.” Jon strained against the shackles that kept him bound and spat the words into Max’s face.

  Max drew out faster than Jon’s eyes could follow and grabbed Jon’s throat in a tight punishing grip. He shoved him back into the wall hard and clamped down until Jon’s vision swam with stars.

  “You know very well what I want boy. You have known it all along so don’t you dare threaten me.” Max released Jon as quickly as he had grabbed him.

  Jon slumped back down into a sitting position and tried to catch his breath. The chains rattled as he raised his hands and rubbed at the place where Max had held him.

  “Now, I want you to tell me why I knew that you were one half of the prophisised couple but I did not know Aisling was?”

  “I don’t know.” Jon’s voice was hoarse and he longed for a drink of water, anything to quench the burning that had started in the back of his throat.

  “Don’t lie to me! I can smell the power on you but from her I got zip. Nada. Whatever you want to call it. I thought she was human!”

  “Then I guess you aren’t very good at your job.” Jon couldn’t resist the smart answer. After all, what did he have to lose? He was trapped here as one of their prisoners and there was nothing he could do to change it.

  Max’s fist crashed into the side of Jon’s face, driving his head back into the wall. The force of the impact caused bursts of light to explode behind Jon’s eyelids. Opening his eyes slowly he tried to shake the feeling of nausea that was gradually creeping up on him. The sweet taste of blood filled his mouth and he spat it out onto the dirty floor.

  “Really Jonathon, do you think it is clever to make me angry? Is it that wise to try to wind me up? I will kill you. I would have done it already if that interfering bastard up top would let me. But no. You are special, he needs you alive. I think he is crazy and the best thing for all of us would be to put you out of your misery like the dog that you are.”

  “But you can’t. You’re not the one in charge. You call me dog Max but the reality is you’re someone’s bitch.”

  Jon knew what would happen when he uttered those words. He knew it anger Max and that he might possibly go too far and kill him. But he couldn’t help but think death might be a way to save Aisling. If he were dead they would never get their hands on her. She would be safe.”

  Max grabbed Jon by the hair and slammed his head into the cold stone wall. Spots danced in his vision but he saw Max pull the long blade from his belt. Jon screamed as the blade bit into his flesh. The warm blood trickled down over his skin and it reminded him of what they had down to his parents.

  His mother had screamed as the hunters had held her down and carved his father up in front of her. She had known what was coming and had begged for them to end her. Tears ran down Jon’s face as he recalled the look of terror in his mother’s eyes when they had laughed. She had wanted to die and they laughed at her. Jon knew they had no intention of simply killing her quickly. She screamed throughout the ordeal and it was etched into his brain. Towards the end she had tried to speak to Jon, babbling really but she had mentioned the Croí and the Hunters but they had slit her throat and she spoke no more.

  Max laughed as Jon cried out when the blade sliced down across his chest. “You’ll never get her you know. She’ll kill you first, wait and see.” Jon whispered the words through gritted teeth and turned his eyes up to Max’s face. The anger was plain on the other man’s face and Jon laughed. Max drew back and punched Jon. Jon welcomed the calm of unconsciousness. Perhaps he would dream of Aisling.

  Chapter Seven

  Screaming filled my ears. Who the hell was screaming at this time of the morning? My mind felt completely disconnected from my body, as though someone had snuck in while I slept and severed my head from the rest of me. I thought about opening my eyes to see who was making such a fuss but my body just wouldn’t co-operate. I thought about pulling the pillow back over my head and drowning the sound out nothing happened. My body didn’t react to any of the commands I tried to give it. What the hell was happening.

  A woman’s voice whispered gently in my ear. It was hard to make out what she was saying over the pitiful wailing but it sounded as though she was telling me to calm down. Why would she be telling me to calm down? Surely she should be trying to calm down whatever lunatic was wailing like a banshee. Her voice sounded familiar and a thought I couldn’t quite put my finger on niggled in the back of my mind. Each time I tried to grab the thought it wormed away from me and spun around and around inside my head.

  “Aisling, it’s me, Natasha.” Something in the way she said my name in that terribly calm voice she was using. It was the type of voice you use on people you are afraid have gone crazy. You know the ones who have suffered some terrible trauma and are now so fragile that if you used your normal voice they would simply crack and break up in your hands. Why was Natasha using that voice on me? I wasn’t crazy.

  The screaming stopped and silence seeped in around me. Finally someone shut the crazy person up.

  “Aisling, can you hear me? It’s Natasha.” She was still using the very quiet soothing voice and it was beginning to do my head in. Where the hell was Jon?

  It hit me then. Everything, all the events of the day. Jon being carted off by the hunters, unconscious or worse. I was shot. And my mother... All that blood spilt across the floor, and the way her mutilated body had looked so lifeless and dull. Almost like a manaquin or a
wax work doll. It looked like her but it couldn’t possibly have been her.

  My mind slipped back into my body and that’s when the pain hit. I felt like someone who had been hit by a freight lorry. My side ached with a dull burning pain and when I tried to move it seared through me. Opening my eyes slowly I looked up at Natasha. She stood over me, a look of worry creasing her brow but when I opened my eyes she seemed to relax a little.

  “Don’t move Aisling, you were shot. We need to take the bolt out.”

  “Where’s Jon? They took him didn’t they?” My voice was shrill and filled with panic.

  “We’ll get him back, Aisling. I promise we’ll get him back. But first we need to get that bolt out of you and have you patched up.”

  “Natasha, I’m frightened. I want Jon. I need him here with me.”

  Natasha smiled pityingly at me and motioned for me to lie still. How would Natasha get the bolt out? She wasn’t a doctor, well as far I knew she wasn’t.

  “Natasha I think I’m losing my mind.” I grabbed her arm hard as I spoke. I needed her to understand just how serious I was about it. The inside of my mind felt as though it was beginning to splinter and break apart. I couldn’t let it do that and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I couldn’t stop it. Would that be it? Would I simply slip entirely into insanity?

  “It’ll be alright Aisling, I promise.” She brushed my hair back from my face and held my hand. Some part of me realised that there was someone else in the room with us. I couldn’t see them and the thought of not knowing who it was frightened me beyond belief.

  “Natasha who is here in the room with us.” My voice was small and frightened. She couldn’t look me in the eye but gripped my hand tighter. A feeling of dread filled me. Why couldn’t she tell me who it was?

  I jumped and cried out as cold hands pressed against my stomach. No one should have hands that cold. In fact the last time I had felt someone with hands that cold had been at my uncle’s funeral. I had touched his face and the cold I felt there was unlike anything I had experienced before. It was a cold that went deeper than just the surface of the skin. It made their skin and bodies hard. When you touch the face of someone alive it feels warm, the skin moves and feels pliable. My uncle’s face had lost that. He felt like someone made of stone, cold, hard and unyielding. It was that feeling that had upset me the most. When we died we lost everything that made us human including our bodies.

  The cold dead hands probed at the wound and I moaned. “Natasha what is it!”

  Her voice shook as she answered me and I could see the fear draining the colour from her face as she watched whatever it was work over me. “They are called Others. They don’t exist on this plane.”

  “But what is it!” The cold fingers probed deeper against the wound until it felt as if they passed through the skin and into the flesh below. I screamed with everything I was worth. The cold fingers pressed against the head of the arrow buried inside my body. An icy feeling crept across my abdomen until I couldn’t feel anything but the odd tugging and pulling sensation of the hands inside my body.

  The hands retreated from my body leaving me feeling empty. Natasha exhaled heavily and I could see relief on her face. “It’s done, the arrow is out.”

  From the corner of my eye I caught sight of something tall and dark. It held the arrow in its grey hands and as I turned to get a better look it was gone.

  “Natasha what was that? And don’t lie to me.”

  She released my hand and began cutting up bandages to use on my wound. “Well like I said, we call them Others. Really they’re the souls of members of the Croí who have died.”

  “I don’t understand... Don’t you move on like every other soul?”

  Natasha’s laugh was short and bitter. “When a member of the Croí dies, they move on... under two conditions of course. The first being that they haven’t met their soul mate and so have no ties to this plane. The other reason is that a soul mate has gone on before them. So they meet up with their soul mate and move on together.”

  I swallowed painfully before asking her. “So what happens if you die but your soul mate hasn’t gone before you?”

  Natasha turned to me with tear filled eyes, “That’s where the Others come in. They can’t move on until their soul mate’s join them. So they hang around unable to truly be a part of this world and unable to join the next.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad Natasha. Doesn’t that mean your Jason is still with you.”

  I jumped as she slammed the scissors down on the table and turned to me. Rage filled her eyes as she glared down at me.

  “Not so bad you say. Allow me to enlighten you Aisling. That was Jason. But not the Jason I knew and loved. He is dead and I won’t be reunited with him until I die. What was here was merely a shade of what he was. It doesn’t know me, doesn’t recognise me. It just knows it can’t leave me. The only thing it feels is an urge to spill my blood. We don’t truly know why this is but I can hazard a guess. Somewhere deep inside itself it knows the only way it can move on is if I’m dead. And I would let him do it if it didn’t mean he would be damned for eternity. Do you know that in that state they’re in constant torment. No rest, no peace. Now do you still want to tell me that it’s not so bad!” She was breathing hard and tears ran down her face in rivulets. I knew the same tears ran down my face. I couldn’t imagine knowing that about Jon. Death was hard enough but to know the one you loved was suffering like that would be unbearable.

  “Natasha, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “No you people never do. You just assume you know what you are talking about. Well just you wait and see what it’s like when it happens to you.” She picked the bandage up and proceeded to strap it across my injury. I didn’t utter a word as she worked, choosing instead to let her work and perhaps calm down a little.

  “Your father wants to see you.” Natasha’s statement startled me out of my contemplation. I didn’t have a father. It had always just been my mother and me and she had certainly never mentioned my father. I stared up at Natasha, confusion clear on my face.

  “I don’t have a father. I never met him and my mom never mentioned him.”

  “Just because you never met him doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”

  I struggled to sit upright and the wound bit into me. I stifled a moan and gritted my teeth. I was tired of lying down anyway, I wanted to be on my feet. To move and be free, I wanted to go to Jon wherever he was.

  “Look just cut out the cryptic crap. Who are you talking about?”

  “Your father is here and he wants to see you.”

  “Where is here?” I was beginning to sound impatient but I didn’t care.

  “The head of the Croí, we thought it was best to get you here as fast as possible. We needed to treat you. You were unconscious for the two days it took us to get here but it was better that way. Your father runs the Croí. After your mother died he needed to send you out into the world so you and Jon could find each other so he gave you a surrogate mother. She was one of us. She gave up her life to look after and protect you.” I lifted my hands as though to fend her off. What she was saying made no sense and my mind refused to take it all in.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “He thought it would be too much for you. So I’m to bring you to him so you can both,” she shrugged, “I don’t know catch up.”

  She took off, walking fast down the hall and I stumbled after her. My side still hurt but it seemed to be gradually improving. My mind was a different matter altogether.

  Chapter Eight

  Jon’s head ached. The light that was streaming down on him made the throbbing in his brain much worse. Tentatively he tried to lift his head only to stop when the spinning reached a critical point. He knew it was going to happen and he couldn’t stop it. The reeling and throbbing in his head was too much. He rolled onto his side and vomited. His body convulsed until all that was left was dry heaving. He attempted once more to push himself up.
The pain gradually intensified until he thought he might be sick again. He held himself in a push up position before deciding to chance sitting back on his heels. Whatever Max had done to him was bad. He probably had a concussion, it certainly felt that way.

  He remembered the last time he had a concussion. It was the summer before last and he had been out all day and night with his friends. They had a few too many drinks and as he stumbled home he had fell knocking his head on a rock. The combination of alcohol and hitting his head left him unconscious but Aisling had found him. She was so worried about him and had insisted that he go straight to the E.R. The doctor of course had told him just how lucky he was and he got the usual lecture on drinking. His head hadn’t hurt as bad then as it did now.

  “So I didn’t kill you then. Pity.” Max’s voice grated against the pounding in Jon’s head. The last thing he needed right now was another unfair death match with that prick.

  “I’m not that easy to kill.” Jon’s voice was hoarse and it sounded odd to his ears.

  “So I see. I suppose it’s just a part of who you are. If you are quite finished getting sick, there is someone who wants to meet you.” Max leaned nonchalantly against the wall. He studied his nails as though they held the secret to the universe and Jon knew there was something he wasn’t telling him.

  “Who wants to meet me?”

  Max looked at him then and smiled, “Well that would be telling now wouldn’t it.”

  Jon sat back and looked Max up and down, the chains clinked as he moved and he sighed. He wondered where Aisling was. Was she safe? Did she know the hunters had him? It would be her birthday in a few days. If he could just find a way back to her, perhaps with their combined powers they could stop the hunters. But how was he to get back to her?